Online Child Abuse - Centre for Abuse and Trauma Studies

Online Child Abuse:
Understanding Offender
Behaviour and Managing Risk
Professor Julia Davidson, Centre for Abuse & Trauma
Studies , Kingston University
II^ INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE ADVANCED HIGH SCHOOL OF
CRIMINOLOGICAL SCIENCES Criminal Behaviours: Impacts, Tools and Social
Networks Milan, ITALY 10- 12 MAY 2013
Overview
• Definitions and legal context
• Understanding online offending: Recent research (focus
on grooming)
• Grooming and collection of indecent images
• Managing serious offenders in the community: The
effectiveness of the UK system
Context: Online Child Sexual
Abuse
Internet sexual offender behaviour can include:
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Construction of virtual communities for exchange of
information, experiences, and indecent images. Use of
SNS and other platforms e.g. Boylovers Forum
Production, distribution and possession of indecent
child images
Travelling SOs & sexual tourism
Grooming of children for the purposes of sexual abuse
The trafficking of children for the purpose of sexual
abuse
Behaviours not mutually exclusive
Online Grooming Behaviour
• Process of socialisation by which a person befriends a child or
an adolescent online to facilitate sexual contact with them
online, offline or in both settings (Webster, Davidson, Bifulco,
Gottschalk, Caretti, Pham, Grove-Hills, et al., 2012; for a
review see Whittle, Hamilton-Giachritsis, Beech & Collings,
2013).
• Concept drawn from early sex offender literature (Finkelhor,
1988)
• Studies have focused have used police reports and interviews
with law enforcement (Jones, Mitchell, Wolak & Finkelhor,
2013; Shannon, 2008) or direct interviews with convicted
groomers (Briggs, Simon & Simonsens, 2011; Malesky, 2007,
Webster et al, 2012; Seto, 2011).
EU Directive
Some member states have grooming legislation (e.g.. England &
Wales (SoA, 2003: s15), Finland (RL, code 1998:563) & Sweden
(SFS, code 2009:343) .
• EU directive (November 2011)
• member states must introduce grooming and child indecent
image legislation within two years
• minimum sentences: three years in prison for producers
of child indecent images, one year for consumers, ten years for
forcing children into sexual acts
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/press
data/en/jha/126068.pdf
*
EU Directive: Challenges
• UN Convention Rights of the Child = under 18 but
definition of child determined by legal age of consent,
varies widely across Europe e.g.. 15 in Sweden,
Finland -16, Germany -14 and 16 in the UK.
• Precautionary nature - requires compelling (and difficult
to obtain) evidence regarding the ‘intention’ to commit
offence (Kool, 2011)
• Reluctance to enforce law at national level?
Victim choice & Offender
Characteristics
• Older adolescents more likely than younger adolescents and
children to be groomed online (Webster et al, 2012 found a
mean age of 13)
• Online groomers more often report a hebephilic sexual
interest (i.e. interest in pubertal children and adolescents)
than a pedophilic (i.e. interest in pre-pubertal children)
(Bergen, Antfolk, Jern, Alanko, & Santtila, submitted; Seto,
Wood, Babchishin, & Flynn, 2012: Wolak, Finkelhor, Mitchell,
& Ybarra, 2008).
• Predominantly male and generally well educated (Seto,
Wood, Babchishin, & Flynn, 2012), with a high IQ (Webster et
al., 2012) .
• High level of ICT knowledge (Webster et al, 2012)
Online Behaviour
• Approach can be prolonged (traditional
grooming process) or immediate (Webster et al,
2012; Quayle, 2012).
• Use of false identities – portray themselves as
younger online or using some form of deception
(Malesky, 2007; Wolak, Finkelhor & Mitchell,
2004)
• Online identity deception common amongst
adolescents as well (Simpson, 2005; Loof et al
2012)
Online Behaviour
• Risk management – false personal details ,
starting in a public space e.g. SNS and moving to
a private space e.g. Mobile, using proxy server
(Webster et al, 2012)
• Psychological risk management to increase
compliance- threat and blackmail (Webster et
al., 2012).
• Hyper- sexualised group – networked, fishing
trip on SNS, likely to have large indecent image
collections (Webster et al., 2012: Quayle, 2012) .
European Online Grooming
Project
• Aims:
• understand the different ways sexual offenders approach,
communicate and ‘groom’ young people online.
• empower policy makers, front line professionals, teachers, carers
and young people to effectively manage online risks.
• Co-funded by the European Commission Safer Internet
Plus Programme. Running from June 2009 to March
2012.
• Three inter-linked phases: 1) scoping; 2) groomer
interviews; 3) dissemination (YP, stakeholders)
Consortium
• UK
• Stephen Webster, NatCen Social Research, London
• Professor Julia Davidson, Kingston University, London
• Professor Antonia Bifulco, Kingston University, London
• Belgium
• Professor Thierry Pham, University de Mons, Belgium
• Italy
• Professor Vincenzo Caretti, Università degli Studi di Palermo
• Norway
• Professor Petter Gottschalk Norwegian School of Management,
Oslo
Grooming & Collection of
Indecent Images
‘it was something new, something different…but then I sort of
started thinking, well, in the same way that I’d been talking to
adults about sex and pornography and everything, I thought
well, maybe there’s going to be young people out there to talk to
about sex so I started going looking for profiles on Yahoo! and
MSN for young girls…..’
Indecent Child Images
• Collections from none, to a few, to >20,000.
Classification systems described in literature (O’Brien &
Webster, 2007) found in this study
• Key themes emerged about the role of indecent images
in online grooming:
• Offence maintenance, denial of harm ,demand and
status.
Indecent Images:
Maintenance
• Relative ease illegal content could be sourced first
maintaining feature
• The men did not have to work hard to search out the
material:
• some talked about viewing indecent images as
becoming a normal part of their life.
• Scale of indecent material online had a bearing on some
behaviours:
• with so much material online to view, groomers do not
feel isolated or different viewing the content.
Indecent Images: Denial of Harm
• Features of some images (smiling / happy faces) justify
and help some men continue with child sexual abuse.
Judicious selection to support offending:
If I saw a facial look that they were uncomfortable in
what they were doing…I would filter that out……
• Some boundaries also became blurred:
At the time… I said I’m not doing any harm. Harm isn’t
even being caused. Its all just pornography; its all part of
the same thing.
Indecent Images: Demand &
Status
• Sense of kudos / credibility being a provider of material made some individuals feel important:
‘…it was something else I thought I was good at. I knew
where to go. I would even show off to people [in chat
rooms]… I became part of a club and I had more images I
could show off to them’
‘I felt powerful and important knowing that people
wanted access to my images. It was exciting and gave
me a kick. When I logged on I would get a stream of
requests ‘do you have something new for us’. I then
began to abuse more frequently to meet the request for
more pictures’
Sex Offender Management in the UK
• Multi-Agency Public
Protection Arrangements
(MAPPA) are one of the
central features of
government policy in the UK
for managing the risk
presented by violent and
sexual offenders in the
community.
• Established in 2001 under the
Criminal Justice and Court
Services Act 2000
How do MAPPA work?
Agencies working together to manage serious offenders in the
community
Process involves assessment of risk posed by an offender
which results in a risk management (RM) plan .
The RM plan can include : agreeing licence conditions; Sexual
Offences Prevention Orders (SOPOs); identifying housing or
other needs.
High risk offenders are referred to a Multi-Agency Public
Protection panel meeting (forum in which the offender’s risk
and management plan is discussed and agreed by agencies).
Balancing Needs
MAPPA Process
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4
Offender
Identification
Agency Info
sharing
Risk
Assessment
Risk
Management
MAPPA Offender Categories
Category 1- refers to registered sexual offenders (i.e. offenders required
to comply with the notification requirements set out in Part 2 of the
Sexual Offences Act 2003)
Category 2- offenders are violent and other sexual offenders, who have
been sentenced to 12 months or more in custody.
Category 3- offenders are classed as ‘other’ offenders - they are not in
Category 1 or 2, but are considered by the responsible authority to pose
a risk of serious harm to the public.
Evaluations
• Four evaluations of MAPPA (Maguire et al., 2001 Kemshall et
al., 2005; Wood and Kemshall, 2007; Nash & Walker , 2009).
• Improving standards and greater consistency of MAPPA
during its early implementation.
• Data on Serious Further Offences, breaches and recall are
provided in the MAPPA annual reports (see Ministry of Justice
2010b) but too recent to allow comparisons.
• Peck (2011) MoJ research has explored reconviction rates of
‘MAPPA-eligible’ offenders released from custody into the
community in England and Wales since the introduction of
MAPPA in 2001.
Later Research : Inter-Agency Cooperation
Inter-agency cooperation is key:
•Cooperation extensive between agencies
• Problems with agencies traditionally viewed as resistant
to sharing (health, social services), key information not
shared in timely fashion;
•Problems in communication amongst the core members
such as the police and probation service.
Nash & Walker, 2009
•Research on child victims in the investigative process and
low conviction rates has similar findings
Davidson & Bifulco, 2006 & 2010, 2012
Does MAPPA Work ?
• Study compared one-year reconviction rates of 7 annual
cohorts of ‘MAPPA-eligible’ offenders released from custody
between 1998 and 2004 (N = approximately 9,500 offenders
in each cohort).
Aim- ‘to explore whether reconviction rates of MAPPA-eligible
offenders released into the community from prison custody
changed in England and Wales since the introduction of
MAPPA in 2001’.
(Peck, 2011)
Findings: Reconvictions
(Peck, 2011)
•High-risk offenders - marked decrease in reconvictions
post-MAPPA implementation.
•2000 cohort, 45% of high-risk offenders were reconvicted,
and this had fallen to 35.8% by the 2004 cohort (a 9.2
percentage point reduction)
•Proportion reconvicted of other violent and/or sexual
offences (including robbery, assault, indecent exposure,
indecent child images offences) fell 1.4 percentage points
between the 2000 and 2004 cohorts.
‘Of particular note is the finding that the reconviction rate of
offenders deemed at highest risk of reconviction fell relatively
quickly after MAPPA was implemented. Risk assessment is key in
the MAPPA process as offenders deemed to pose the greatest
risk receive more intensive multi-agency management. Results
from this study indicate some success in adopting this sort of
risk-based approach, and supports policy to target resource on
higher risk offenders’ Peck, p31, 2011
Managing Internet Sex Offenders
• Routine inspection of home computers
(mobile devices)
• Unannounced visits by MAPPA Officers to view offenders home
environments and explore computing use.
• Monitoring software (used in the US)
• Use of polygraph (piloted by police forces)
• Probation officers – routine screening Qs all sex offenders about
Internet use
• Use of risk assessment tool designed for ISO’s needed
‘I
think we should be screening all sex offenders and asking the right
questions about Internet use. I’m sure we’d find a lot more using
the Internet’
Probation Officer/Facilitator 1.National Probation Service, 2008
Davidson (2008) Risk Management Authority Scotland
Thanks for your attention
Professor Julia Davidson,
davidsonjulia@yahoo.co.uk