Handbook on Sexual Violence (82 page)

Concluding remarks

Clearly the Internet has changed the way we live our lives, and this is perhaps particularly true for young people. Young people use the Internet to meet new people, they use the Internet to maintain friendships with people they like, they use it to fall in love, and they have very real boyfriends and girlfriends whom they have never met offline. The social world of many young people today spans the Internet and what we often still refer to as the ‘real world’ with no clear dividing line between the two, and what happens to young people online is thus just as much a part of their ‘real world’ or ‘real life’ as what happens offline.

The literature on children’s use of the Internet has been careful to point out that it has the potential to play a very positive role in child development. In the area of relationships, for example, the Internet has been described as providing previously unknown opportunities for children to learn about sexual issues that may be difficult to discuss with parents or teachers, or with anyone else for that matter, in the context of more traditional social environments (e.g. Calder 2004). The Internet serves as a forum for counselling services, for information about sexually transmitted diseases and safe sex, as well as for information and advice for young people feeling insecure about their sexuality.

At the same time, however, there are many potential pitfalls and dangers associated with the Internet. These include the supply of distorted and at times extremely misleading information, the easy accessibility of violent images and pornography, and the opportunities provided by the Internet for new forms of bullying and sexual harassment and abuse. The presence on the Internet of adults who are actively seeking contact with young people in order to sexually exploit and abuse them naturally also falls within this category.

To safeguard the positive potential of the Internet, it is important that we

do all we can to minimise the risks that young people face online. Parents need to be aware of these risks, as do teachers and other professional groups that work with children, and since young people cannot and should not be constantly monitored by adults, these groups also need to be equipped with a knowledge of what is needed to empower children to themselves deal with the risks associated with Internet use.

Unfortunately, we are today still in a situation where young people often know much more about the Internet than the adults who should ideally be able to mentor them. Hopefully this will gradually begin to change as today’s ‘Internet generation’ matures into the parents, teachers and childcare professionals of tomorrow. There are nonetheless important challenges that even this much more Internet-savvy generation of adults will continue to face, since, as we know, the Internet is a highly changeable environment. It is therefore essential that we continuously monitor the nature of the dangers that confront young people online, that we stay abreast of developments in this rapidly changing environment, and that we work to ensure that minimising the risks faced by young people online is made as important a priority as that of minimising the dangers faced by children in offline environments.

Further reading

The website of the Crimes Against Children Research Center is a very useful starting point for further reading on online sexual violence against children (http:// www.unh.edu/ccrc/internet
-crimes/). Amongst other things the site offers access to papers written on the basis of the data collected in three large research projects: The National Juvenile Online Victimization Study (of which there are now three waves), the Youth Internet Safety Survey (also three waves) and the Survey of Internet Mental Health Issues (a large-scale survey of mental health professionals’ assessments of their clients’ problematic Internet experiences). Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo’s (2009) literature review of
Online Child Grooming
provides a wide-ranging insight into the diversity of topics covered by research in this area, while Sonia Livingstone’s (2009)
Children and the Internet
(Oxford: Polity Press) presents a very thought-provoking account both of the ways in which children’s lives have been changed by the advent of widespread Internet use and of the everyday online practices and experiences of young people themselves.

Notes

1. Many of the formulations employed in the questionnaire were inspired by the telephone survey instrument developed at the Crimes Against Children Research Center in New Hampshire for use in the first Youth Internet Safety Survey (Finkelhor
   et al
   . 2000).
   

2. The data collection approach was once again inspired by work conducted at the
   

   Crimes Against Children Research Center, this time in the National Juvenile Online Victimization Study (Wolak
   et al
   . 2004b).
   

3. The offences included in the study were reported between 1 January 2004 and 26 September 2006. The material can be broken down into different types of contacts as follows. 1) Cases where perpetrator and victim had only been in contact online (n=179); 2) Cases where perpetrator and victim had been in contact both online and offline (e.g. by phone), but where the material provides no sure indication of a sexual offence having taken place at an offline meeting (n=45); 3) Cases where an adult perpetrator who already knew the child offline had used the Internet to develop the existing relationship for sexual purposes (n=22); 4) Cases where the perpetrator and the victim came into contact with one another online, and where the perpetrator had subsequently committed a sexual offence against the victim at an offline meeting (n=69). A more detailed presentation of the police data can be found in Shannon 2008.
   

4. The survey is conducted among a representative sample of youth in their final year of secondary education (aged 15). The sample is drawn systematically from a list of all Swedish schools with year nine classes, ordered by school size. The 2008 survey was completed by a total of 6,893 students, which represents a response rate of 80% of the original sample (Bra˚ 2010).
   

5. The nature of Internet communications means of course that it is never easy to know how old someone is if your only contact with them has been online, and thus the participants’ responses as to the age of the person contacting them will in many instances constitute a ‘best guess’.
   

6. Males were responsible for the vast majority of the contacts described by both the web survey respondents and by those who reported incidents to the police. Both data sets did, however, also contain a small number of examples of contacts which the respondent or victim stated had been initiated by an adult female. None of the
   offline
   sex offences had been committed by females, however.
   

References

Alvin Malesky Jr., L. (2007) ‘Predatory online behavior: Modus operandi of convicted sex offenders in identifying potential victims and contacting minors over the internet’,
Journal of Child Sexual Abuse
, 16: 23–31.

Bra˚ (2007)
The online sexual solicitation of children by adults in Sweden
. English summary of Bra˚-report No. 2007: 11. Stockholm: Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention.

Bra˚ (2010)
Brott bland ungdomar i ˚arskurs nio
. (Crime among youths in year nine. Results from the Swedish School Survey on Crime 1995–2008). Report 2010: 6. Stockholm: Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention.

Calder, M. (2004) ‘The Internet: potential, problems and pathways to hands-on sexual offending’, in M. Calder (ed.)
Child Sexual Abuse and the Internet: Tackling the new frontier
. Lyme Regis: Russell House Publishing.

Choo, K.R. (2009)
Online Child Grooming: A literature review on the misuse of social networking sites for grooming children for sexual offences
. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.

Craig, L.A., Browne, K.D. and Beech, A.R. (2008)
Assessing Risk in Sex Offenders. A practitioner’s guide
. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.

Finkelhor, D., Mitchell, K.J. and Wolak, J. (2000)
Online Victimization: A report on the nation’s youth
. Alexandria: National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Gallagher, B., Fraser, C., Christmann, K. and Hodgson, B. (2006)
International and Internet Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation
. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield, Centre for Applied Childhood Studies.

Krone, T. (2004) A typology of online child pornography offending.
Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice
no. 279. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.

Marcum, C.D. (2007) ‘Interpreting the intentions of internet predators: An examination of online predatory behaviour’,
Journal of Child Sexual Abuse
, 16: 99–114.

Martens, P. (1989)
Sexualbrott mot barn. Presentation och diskussion av n˚agra centrala teman inom forskningsomr˚adet
. (Sexual offences against children. Presentation and discussion of central research themes), Bra˚-report 1989: 1. Stockholm: Fritzes.

McAlinden, A-M. (2006) ‘ ‘‘Setting ’em up’’: Personal, familial and institutional grooming in the sexual abuse of children’,
Social and Legal Studies
, 15: 339–62.

Mitchell K., Finkelhor, D. and Wolak, J. (2001) ‘Risk factors and impact of the online sexual solicitation of youth’,
Journal of the American Medical Association
, 285, 1–4.

O’Connell, R. (2003)
A Typology of Child Cybersexploitation and Online Grooming Practices
.

Preston: University of Central Lancashire, Cybersex Research Unit.

O’Connell, R. (2004) ‘From fixed to mobile Internet: The morphing of criminal activity online’, in M. Calder (ed.)
Child Sexual Abuse and the Internet: Tackling the new frontier
. Lyme Regis: Russell House Publishing.

O’Connell, R., Price, J. and Barrow, C. (2004)
Cyber Stalking, Abusive Cyber Sex and Online Grooming. A programme of education for teenagers
. Preston: University of Central Lancashire, Cybersex Research Unit.

Rabinowitz-Greenberg, S.R., Firestone, P., Bradford, J.M. and Greenberg, D.M. (2002) ‘Prediction of recidivism in exhibitionists: Psychological, phallometric, and offence factors’,
Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment
, 14, 329–47.

Shannon, D. (2008) ‘Online sexual grooming in Sweden – Online and offline sex offences against children as described in Swedish police data’,
Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention
, 9: 160–180.

Stanley, J. (2001) Child abuse and the internet.
Child Abuse Prevention Issues
, No. 15.

Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies.

Sugarman, P., Dumughn, C., Saad, K., Hinder, S. and Bluglass, R. (1994) ‘Dangerousness in exhibitionists’,
Journal of Forensic Psychiatry
, 5: 287–96.

Svensson, R. and Ring, J. (2007) ‘Trends in self-reported youth crime and victimisation in Sweden, 1995–2005’, J
ournal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention
, 8, 153–177.

Wolak, J., Finkelhor, D. and Mitchell, K.J. (2004a) ‘Internet-initiated sex crimes against

minors: Implications for prevention based on findings from a national study’,
Journal of Adolescent Health
, 35(5): 424–33.

Wolak, J., Mitchell, K.J. and Finkelhor, D. (2003)
Internet Sex Crimes Against Minors: The response of law enforcement
. Alexandria, VA: National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Wolak, J., Mitchell, K. and Finkelhor, D. (2004b)
National juvenile online victimization study (N-Jov): Methodology report
. New Hampshire: Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire.

Wolak, J., Mitchell, K. and Finkelhor, D. (2006)
Online Victimization of Youth: Five years later
. Alexandria: National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Chapter 17
‌

Practitioner commentary: working with sexual violence

Stephanie Kewley

Meet Stephanie Kewley

Stephanie is currently a Programme Manager for the National Probation Service. For the past eight years she has worked as a treatment practitioner in both custodial and community settings, delivering a range of offending behaviour programmes to offenders. Much of her practice has focused on work with perpetrators of sexual violence. Stephanie is also a part-time PhD student with the University of Birmingham. Her thesis explores how religiosity and religious affiliation assist sexual offenders engaged in the process of desistance.

Introduction

The prevalence of sexual violence is of global concern. Indeed the World Health Organisation identifies sexual violence as a major public health problem (Violence Against Women 2009). The damaging effects of sexual violence against women are well documented, from emotional and psychological effects to physical injuries and death (Harvey
et al
. 2007).