A growing number of Swedish children are being pressured or forced to send nude photos online and in just a few years the number of reported cases has increased by over 50 percent.
At the same time, the police believe that there is a very large number of unreported cases and urge more victims to dare to report.
In 2019, 922 cases of child sexual exploitation were reported – last year, the police received 1421 reports in the same crime category. In five years, this represents a 54% increase.
The abuse often takes place on Snapchat and other social media that children frequently use, and the police estimate that a large majority of victims never dare to report the crimes.
– Where the children are, there are also the perpetrators, notes Umeå Police Jonas Edin and emphasizes that pedophiles are often experts at grooming children, and that it can go very quickly from the time contact is made to the child being persuaded to send pictures.
The perpetrators use different strategies to get the pictures, from flattery to threats or even pretending to be a child and trying to establish a relationship with the victim. Sooner or later, however, the calls to send undressed pictures come.
Good detection statistics
Police urge parents to keep an eye on what their children are doing online and use the built-in features that allow them to see which users their children are actually communicating with.
Jonas Edin also urges more people to take courage and report if they have been subjected to this type of abuse and points out that the clear-up statistics are good once the crime has come to the attention of the police.
– We often have the opportunity to find a suspect and get a conviction.
Many victims per perpetrator
He also points out that pedophiles are often completely boundless and that they often target even very young children if they see an opportunity.
– If you gave a phone with a chat function to a newborn baby and it could communicate, perpetrators would try to get it to send naked pictures. We know that, he tells state television SVT.
Once an offender has been arrested following a report, it is also very common for the police to find many more victims when going through their accounts and chat logs.
Anyone wishing to report online child sexual abuse can either call the police on 114 14 (Sweden only) or visit a police station. If the crime is ongoing, the emergency number 112 should be contacted instead.
