Protecting Children Online

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

On Monday the Home Affairs Committee launched its report on child sexual exploitation and grooming. Rotherham is one of the areas that figures in that report, due to its historic failings in tackling that vile crime. Since my election six months ago, I have made it my mission to ensure that we do not let Rotherham children, and indeed all children, down like that again. Rotherham council and South Yorkshire police are now working collaboratively with the national charity Barnardo’s and local charities SAFE@LAST and GROW. Together they will implement preventive measures and investigate and prosecute abusers.

Since January there have been 34 investigations into child sexual exploitation. Seven offenders are now being prosecuted and there are four major ongoing operations. I assure you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and this House that I will be watching like a hawk to make sure that the authorities continue to protect our children. However, child sexual exploitation has been steadily increasing in the UK. Barnardo’s, which runs 24 sexual exploitation services across the country, saw a 22% increase in the numbers of sexually exploited children in 2011-12. The internet has been used in the majority of those cases.

The dramatic rise in the use of communications technology and the development of new forms of social interaction online have hugely complicated child protection in Britain. Social media have greatly increased the ability of gangs and individuals to target vulnerable children. Children naively share a great deal of information online and are often unaware of the risks in doing so, or of the security measures that are there to protect them. Abusers have always been able to identify vulnerable children, but social media and mobile phones now make it easy for them to make contact with them.

Technology has left parents with an extremely difficult task in monitoring their children’s interactions and recognising potentially dangerous situations. Children and parents must be better educated as to the risks of online communications and the safeguards that are currently available. I recognise the comments of the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), which others have echoed, but I still urge the House to support our proposal to have safe search as the default option on computers and search engines. Filters already exist to screen out harmful material, but 54% of parents whose children use the internet at home have no parental controls installed on their devices. Making filters the factory setting removes this risk, and parents have the option to opt out of the system if they see fit.

Social media have increasingly exposed ever-younger children to sexualised material. Some 24% of nine to 16-year-olds in the UK say that they have seen sexual images in the past 12 months, online or offline. A number of services have linked exposure to overtly sexual content via the internet with children displaying inappropriately sexual behaviour. Such behaviour has been highlighted as contributing to greater vulnerability of increasingly young children. I do not believe in censoring the internet, but it is important that children are protected from inappropriate content.

In the past, increased sexual behaviour among children has led to a perception that they are somehow complicit in their abuse. Regrettably, this has frequently been an obstacle to proper safeguarding measures being taken. Equally horrifyingly, the child’s sexual awareness has been successfully used in courts to enable abusers to get a lesser sentence. Work is being done to tackle this attitude among authorities and police forces, but it is imperative that proper training is provided to staff to ensure that they take all cases seriously and recognise the need to protect children, regardless of the child’s own attitude or behaviour.

Technology is, by its nature, evolving. Agencies face an extremely complex task in keeping up with developments and ensuring that procedures are adequate and that staff are well trained to meet existing and developing challenges. The complexity of these challenges has demonstrated the need for better co-ordinated operations. Agencies must ensure that there is a free flow of information between them because in the past it has proved too easy for vulnerable children to fall through the gaps due to poor communication. Levels of co-ordination vary widely throughout the country, and that should not be allowed.

While child protection must always be the primary focus, prosecution must not be allowed to become an ancillary concern. I recognise that prosecutions in these cases can be extremely difficult, but without a proper deterrent the risk of child abuse will continue to rise. We must ensure that the law is fit for purpose. New forms of abuse and grooming, especially online, might not always fall under existing laws. It is our duty to provide our police and child protection officers with the tools they require to ensure that vulnerable children are protected and offenders are prosecuted.

A number of recent cases, including in my own constituency, have highlighted the need for further action to tackle child abuse. Good work is being done to ensure that children are protected, but I stress that more needs to be done to meet the demands of a complex and fast-changing problem. We must ensure that vulnerable children are not failed.