Grooming or sexual harassment through the Internet

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It is the progressive sexual harassment of a minor by an adult, who deceitfully contacts the future victim using new information and communications technologies, especially online social networks.

The pedophiles and pederasts use tools such as public profiles created in Facebook, Hi5, MySapce, Twitter, Badoo, Tuenti, Orkut, among others, to look through the profiles created by minors, especially those that have uploaded pictures or personal contact data. That way, the aggressor acquires enough information in order to approach and contact the victim and be accepted as another “friend”.

The objective of the aggressor is to obtain the trust of the kid in order to sexualize the situation by sending explicit dialogues and images to the minor as well as links to pornographic websites. That way the aggressor tries to convince the victims to lose inhibition and to reply with sexual images or dialogues too, which will be used as an extortion tool in order to keep abusing of the minor.

In Peru, since March 2014, the Criminal Code includes Article 183 B regarding “sexual propositions to children and teenagers” which states that: “anyone who contacts a person under fourteen years of age to solicit pornographic material or to incur in sexual activities” will be committing a crime.

Process: Conduct of the sexual aggressor on the Internet
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Some alarming numbers (*)
  • 53% of the teenagers using programs such as BBM, Whatsapp, Line, Facebook Messenger, among others, have between 120 and 250 contacts. 22% have between 250 and 500 contacts.
  • 89% of teens confirm they have befriended a stranger in social networks at some point.
  • 47% not only accepted them as a contact but they also communicated with them and started a friendship.
  • 41% declared to be open to set a meeting with a stranger.
  • 15% set a meeting with a stranger online. 10% went to the meeting. 7% did not let anyone else know they were going.
  • 62% declared having felt harassedonline in some way.
  • 18% have received sexual proposals from strangers online.
  • 67% had accessed pornographic pages.
  • 79% accepted having seen a pornographic video or image.
  • 43% surf the web an average of 4 hours daily. 20% surf the web over 5 hours.
  • 77% indicated that their parents do not know how to use technology such as the Internet or smartphones.
  • Only 8% indicated having participated in a prevention assembly on school.
  • 42% have shared, in their public profiles on social network, their telephone number, full name, school name and address.
(*) Data taken from the national survey about the use of information and communications technology by teenagers, made by the RCPI– Peru, from April to December 2012, in 96 schools, with a total of 5717 students surveyed.

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