More children are committing sexual abuse offences against other children in a “growing and concerning” trend partly fuelled by violent porn and access to smartphones, a police chief has warned.
A report found that half of child sexual abuse offences reported to police in 2022 were crimes committed by children. This is up from around a third historically, with offences classified as those aged 10 to 17 abusing other children.
Ian Critchley, national policing lead for child abuse protection at the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said crimes were most commonly committed by boys against girls, as he warned: “I think that is being exacerbated by the accessibility to violent pornography and the ease in which violent pornography is accessible to boys.”
He added that there was “a perception that is normalised behaviour and that person can carry out that online behaviour against other peers as well”.
Mr Critchley continued: “Clearly the accessibility to smartphones has just rocketed not just in relation to 11 to 16-year-olds, but in relation to under-10s as well, that accessibility has really exacerbated that and I think this is a debate that does need to be had in our society.”
The three most common offences committed by children were sexual assault on a female, rape of a female under 16, and taking, making or sharing indecent images. The most common age for a child perpetrator was 14 years old, a report from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) found.
Data collected from 42 police forces across England and Wales showed that there were a total of 106,984 child sexual abuse and exploitation offences recorded in 2022. This was up 7.6 per cent on the year before and was nearly quadruple the figure ten years ago.
Of these 73 per cent were physical crimes against children and 27 per cent were related to indecent images of children.
Online abuse has also been increasing year on year, with researchers pointing to lockdown as a time when more children than ever were accessing the internet.— (PA)
Almost a third of all child sexual abuse crimes, perpetrated by adults and children, involved abuse within families. Experts believe it will take years for the full scale of abuse committed during the pandemic to become known.
Victims of this kind of familial abuse take 17 years on average to report it to the police. The report explained: “This challenging time of isolation and lockdowns meant there were fewer opportunities for authorities, teachers or friends to identify abuse signs.
“It’s highly likely that many of these crimes are going unreported and hidden for years.”
Online abuse has also been increasing year on year, with researchers pointing to lockdown as a time when more children than ever were accessing the internet.
“Sextortion” has emerged as a worrying trend, experts said, where children are blackmailed with the threat of compromising images being sent to family or released on social media unless money is paid.
Child sexual abuse perpetrated by a group of offenders accounted for 5 per cent of all cases, according to police data, with 80 per cent of perpetrators being White.
Wendy Hart, at the National Crime Agency, said that up to 830,000 adults in the UK pose some degree of sexual risk to children.
She added: “We also know from our collective analysis that the severity of offending has increased, as have the complexities faced by law enforcement in tackling it.
“We are also now seeing hyper-realistic images and videos of abuse being created using artificial intelligence.”
It comes as children’s charity NSPCC launches a campaign with the Home Office to encourage the public to contact their helpline with any concerns that a child might be experiencing sexual abuse.
If you are a child and you need help because something has happened to you, you can call the NSPCC free of charge on 0800 1111. You can also call the NSPCC if you are an adult and you are worried about a child, on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adults on 0808 801 0331
