Police Scotland have launched a campaign to combat an expected rise in child abuse as more people view online pornography during lockdown.
#GetHelpOrGetCaught, the online campaign, aims to explain to porn users that online child abuse is no different from physical child abuse, and refers potential offenders to Stop It Now! Scotland.
The organisation, which helps treats offenders, saw an average of 350 people a week access its online toolkit for help in the beginning of March, in contrast to only 130 people in January.
‘Desensitised’
Police Scotland’s Assistant Chief Constable Duncan Sloan warned: “Kids are holed up in their houses now, they are all using devices and that creates an opportunity for the abusers to reach out and attempt to connect with children in an attempt to groom them or abuse them, potentially in the real world”.
Stuart Allardyce, Director of Stop It Now! Scotland, said that most people “don’t suddenly wake up one day and decide they are going to abuse a child”, but there is “often a drift towards that behaviour where they have become bored and desensitised by legal online pornography and they are looking for more extreme material”.
He added: “Those who groom children online talk about how they were becoming involved with lots of sexual risk taking behaviour online and over time found it was easier to manipulate children than adults.”
The number of online child abuse offences in Scotland has risen. There were 1,694 recorded cases between April 2019 and February 2020, in comparison to 1,573 during the same period for 2018-19.
Young men
The campaign coincides with a senior police officer warning that British men between 18 and 26 years old are emerging as a new group of online paedophiles, after becoming “desensitised ” to legal pornography.
Norfolk Police Chief Constable Simon Bailey said that such men “get to the point where there’s no pornographic material that is stimulating them so then they start to explore what child abuse imagery might look like”.
He added that the UK needs to do more to tackle the growing issue.
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