A leading UK children’s charity has called for “significantly” stronger online protections as figures show more than 3,000 online grooming crimes were recorded by Police Scotland over the last five years.
The Police Scotland data, obtained by the NSPCC, show 3,234 “communicating indecently with a child” offences have been recorded since 2019.
Last year alone saw 672 offences recorded, which the charity said was an increase of 13% on the 593 the year before.
A year on from the passing of the Online Safety Act at Westminster, the charity is calling on regulator Ofcom to strengthen the rules social media firms must follow to tackle child sexual abuse on their platforms.
It says the regulator currently puts too much focus on acting after the harm has taken place, rather than being proactive to ensure design features of social media apps are not contributing to abuse.
READ MORE:
What age can a child stay home alone? Here's what the NSPCC has to say
New sex crime prevention campaign launched by Police Scotland
The NSPCC is also calling on Government to strengthen legislation to ensure child sexual abuse is disrupted in private messages such as on Snapchat and WhatsApp.
Liidia, 14, from Glasgow, who is a member of the charity’s Voices of Online Youth group, spoke about issues with the social media platform Snapchat.
“Snapchat has disappearing messages, and that makes it easier for people to hide things they shouldn’t be doing,” she said.
“Another problem is that Snapchat has this feature where you can show your location to everyone.
“If you’re not careful, you might end up showing where you are to people you don’t know, which is super risky.
“Not all the rules in Snapchat are strict, so some people take advantage of that to do bad things.
“Apps should have better ways for us to report bad things, and they should always get updated to protect us better with the latest security tech.”
Sir Peter Wanless, NSPCC chief executive, said: “One year since the Online Safety Act became law and we are still waiting for tech companies to make their platforms safe for children.
“We need ambitious regulation by Ofcom, who must significantly strengthen their current approach to make companies address how their products are being exploited by offenders.
“It is clear that much of this abuse is taking place in private messaging, which is why we also need the UK Government to strengthen the Online Safety Act to give Ofcom more legal certainty to tackle child sexual abuse on the likes of Snapchat and WhatsApp.”
Becky Riggs, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for child protection and abuse investigations, said: “The numbers in this NSPCC data are shocking and policing joins partners in urging tech companies and Ofcom to fulfil their legal and moral obligations to keep children safe from harm within the online communities they have created.
“A year on from the Online Safety Act being passed, it is imperative that the responsibility of safeguarding children online is placed with the companies who create spaces for them, and the regulator strengthens rules that social media platforms must follow.
“Policing will not stop in its fight against those who commit these horrific crimes.
“We cannot do this alone, so while we continue to pursue and prosecute those who abuse and exploit children, we repeat our call for more to be done by companies in this space.”
A Snapchat spokesperson said: “Any sexual exploitation of young people is horrific and illegal and we have zero tolerance for it on Snapchat.
“If we identify such activity, or it is reported to us, we remove the content, disable the account, take steps to prevent the offender from creating additional accounts, and report them to the authorities.
“We have extra protections including in-app warnings to make it difficult for teens to be contacted by strangers, and our in-app Family Centre lets parents see who their teens are talking to, and who their friends are.”
Police Scotland has been approached for comment.
Detective chief inspector Michael Smith of Police Scotland said: “Protecting children is a priority for Police Scotland. We remain committed to tackling the evolving threat of online grooming and child sexual abuse.
“We invest in resources and use the latest technologies to investigate and identify victims, allowing us to safeguard children wherever possible.
“Working closely with our local and national partners, we can track down offenders, improve services and ensure appropriate support is available for victims.
“Anyone who reports child abuse can be assured we will listen and investigate, no matter when or where the offences happened. If you suspect someone may be abusing children, please contact the police on 101 or dial 999 if you think there is immediate risk of harm.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here