Prohibited Sexual Behavior and Sexual Violence

Adult Sexual Contact with Children: Child Pornography 2

The Virtual Global Taskforce is an alliance of law enforcement agencies from around the world working together to fight online child abuse. (For details, click on logo.)

Today, most pornographic material involving children is collected, transmitted and shared in the internet. In view of the sexual exploitation involved, new laws have been passed to take account of this new situation. At the same time, law enforcement agencies have been brought up to date and their international co-operation has been strengthened. A good example of such co-operation is the Virtual Global Task Force fighting “online child abuse”. For this term, it gives the following definition:

Online child abuse includes:
1. making and downloading images of children being sexually abused; and
2. approaching a child online for sex. This could be sex online (e.g. sexual
   activity via text or webcam) or sex offline (e.g. grooming a child online for the
   purpose of meeting up for sex in the "real" world).

As this statement makes clear, the Task Force is not content with fighting child pornography, but sees a possible connection to actual sexual contact and therefore tries to prevent both. It seems logical to assume such a connection, but how close and how important it is remains unknown at this time. It is also unknown how many children and adults are involved in either form of sexual exploitation. The Task Force itself estimates that “25-35% of young internet users have been exposed to sexual material.” However, once again, the concrete meaning of this estimate remains elusive. It all depends on the definitions of “young” and “sexual material”.
Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the internet has created new opportunities for criminals to take advantage of the unwary, and that especially children need to be protected from adults who try to exploit them for their own sexual purposes.