Thailand raises alarm on online child sexual harassment surge

[webfact]

Thailand’s National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) raised alarms about the severe impact of sexual harassment on social media on children and young people.

 

A recent social outlook report from the NESDC, released yesterday, indicates that victims of such harassment risk developing a range of social, emotional, and mental health problems, including anxiety and depression. In some cases, these traumas have led to criminal behaviour.

 

ECPAT International, an organisation affiliated with UNICEF, identified Thailand as one of the 25 countries with alarming levels of online sexual harassment against children and youth. This is in line with data from the Royal Thai Police, which reports a significant increase in child sexual abuse cases, rising from 48 in 2017 to 540 last year.

 

The NESDC categorises online sexual harassment against children into three levels. Low-level harassment often involves perpetrators who do not see their actions as harmful, such as making sexually suggestive comments about school-aged children.

Moderate-level harassment involves repeated actions intended to cause emotional distress, such as persistent harassment, attempts to humiliate the victims, and invading personal privacy gradually.

Severe or high-level harassment includes violent and aggressive actions that cause significant emotional and psychological harm. This level violates sexual abuse laws and includes luring minors into romantic relationships, coercing them into sexual acts, recording these acts without consent, and exploiting the victims by charging people to view these recordings.

 

A UNICEF report from 2022 highlighted that many young people do not know how to seek help if they or their friends experience online sexual abuse. Some do not see themselves as victims, while others are too shy to report it, leading to underreporting of these crimes, according to the NESDC.

 

The NESDC emphasises the need for immediate measures to address this problem. Family members should closely monitor their children’s use of social media, and both the government and communities need to implement stringent measures to punish perpetrators.

 

Education providers and communities must also play a role in educating people about their rights, the risks of online sexual harassment, and the evolving nature of online threats.

 

The NESDC suggests that families should teach their children how to protect personal information, and that education providers should incorporate lessons on dealing with sexual grooming into their curricula, reported Bangkok Post.

 

by Puntid Tantivangphaisal
Photo courtesy of Bangkok Post

 

Source: The Thaiger 

-- 2024-09-17
 

 

[jcmj]

I’m glad that they are attempting to deal with this situation. Unfortunately with all the kids having phones and access to the internet it will be hard to stop them all. Curiosity can get anyone in trouble these days on the internet. 

[hotchilli]

The dark side of the web.... 

[brfsa2]

Guys, this is a huge problem worldwide, and now in Thailand it's starting to pick it up. 

How it start most of the times: the abusers start in social media, looking for teens and kids, then make friends and ask a photo or something that makes them shame, such as giving a top-less photo shot. Then, the criminal suddenly change attitude and ask for more, threatening to release that first photo to the school, parents and friends, making the child fear for being shamed. This go on for months or years, they are made do things in the camera and online, even meeting up. 

In the UK this happened a lot and still happening, also it started in Australia.

Those kids and teens are being traumatized for life, they cannot even talk about it before totally breaking down.

And do you know where the photos end up? in websites where people pay crypto to get those child abuse content. Worse of all, those websites are incredibly hard to take down. 

https://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-Events/News/2023/Operation-Narsil-disrupts-network-of-child-abuse-websites-designed-to-generate-profits-from-advertising 

The FBI and the Interpol are taking down sites all the time, but it's really hard and take a while. 

 

I read all about it this book with a lot of details: "Rinsed by Geoff White" https://www.ft.com/content/35867bba-65b5-407d-967e-716ef5cfb633 

If you want to know how all this works, this book is incredibly good with mind blowing details.

 

 

What do parents and schools need to do urgently:

1. Educate and teach children of the dangers in the internet, showing clearly how it's done and how they can prevent 

2. Parents need to closely monitor teens mobile phone and social accounts. 

(parents can even use iPhone in child mode, so that the phone itself has safe guards enabled to prevent child abuse, Apple has child pornography detection.

3. Teens should have all the social profiles locked down to be private and all privacy settings should be enabled. Most parents dont do this. 

[john donson]

make facebook and other crap illegal under 18 ? problem solved?

[thesetat2013]

5 hours ago, webfact said:

A recent social outlook report from the NESDC, released yesterday, indicates that victims of such harassment risk developing a range of social, emotional, and mental health problems, including anxiety and depression. In some cases, these traumas have led to criminal behaviour.

If this is true, then there are alot of people who are not children with these disorders and the country should have open care centers for all the people. Child abuse and sexual harassment has been happening in Thailand for a very long time. It is only now with social media that it is coming to light in your home daily. Nothing has changed. that is why teachers and police and politicians feel so comfortable in doing this. It is part of their society for a long time already. 

[trainman34014]

For a start there will have been way way more than 540 cases in Thailand last year as many go unreported and any numbers that are bad news for Thailands 'Image' are dumbed down here.

 

A good start would be rounding up all the Beer Swilling, Pot Smoking Fathers, Grandfathers and 'Uncles' who love to play with the Young Girls in the Family and any others they can get their hands on.    Having lived in Rural Regions here for 20 years i have witnessed many 'situations' of abuse of Children; it's endemic, and the 'Authorities' do nothing to stop it.