IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT: why online sexual abuse of children is tightly linked to knowing personal boundaries and consent culture

It is normal to fall in love at 15, to trust people and to want to build a beautiful relationship, including on social networks. How else in the XXI century?!

It is a healthy and correct attitude to have towards a harmonious physiological and psychological development of today’s adolescents. This attitude is recommended by the specialists of the Issues Affecting Children Program from the IC La Strada Moldova. They also say that, apart from validating their emotions, children and adolescents also need to be helped to understand the limit between their desires and somebody else’s, their own decisions and the pressure and manipulative behaviours of other people.

On Safer Internet Day, La Strada specialists bring into discussion the subject of online sexual blackmail and abuse of children and adolescents, through a new animated video.

Elena BOTEZATU, Director of the Issues Affecting Children Program, La Strada Moldova: we worked on this video material together with the adolescents. We asked for their opinions at every stage, from the concept creation to the finalising of the style, characters, phrases… Thus, we hope that the animation will reach their hearts, will inspire confidence in them and, more than anything, make them talk about their problem when a situation is beyond them. Although, ideally, the story of the characters would help them stay away from the risks of dangerous communications on social networks.

Statistical data from the siguronline.md platform for the previous year shows that more and more adolescents go for friendships or romantic relationships developed online. This trend is directly linked to the pandemic situation. Because the children are lacking the live interaction with their friends and classmates, they started to socialise virtually more than they used to before. As a consequence, the online relationship problems that they have faced became more intense than before. This fact is confirmed by the increase in the number of requests on siguronline.md coming from children, compared to last year (210% increase).

In the majority of cases of online sexual abuse, it is the children who went through these situations who asked for our help. This is an important difference compared to previous years, when abuse cases were reported by third parties, especially friends and classmates of the child.

This is also a sign that adolescents and children can be and deserve to be helped in developing a consent culture and personal boundaries, whether it is in relationships with friends and classmates in real life, or romantic relationships that adolescents build on social media.

Our children have the right to see good examples of empathic communication. And us, adults, must remind them that not even the most trustworthy person, nor the person you love or like, should make you go over your personal boundaries, ignoring signs of manipulation or toxic relationships, which increase the risks of blackmail or emotional, sexual exploitation.

These risks increase exponentially in the online environment, where with one click, any private information can become public.

Safer Internet Day marks the debut of a number of intense weeks, with lots of events, activities, competitions and projects in the field of online safety. All thought-through and tailored in a way that amplifies the efforts of adults in creating a safe, good and creative space for children in the online environment, and that prevents the abuse and sexual exploitation of children online.

As the National SID Committee, La Strada Moldova implements the international SID initiative campaign in the Republic of Moldova with the slogan “Together for a better internet.” For 17 years, the goal of this campaign has been the same: to mobilize citizens, the civil society, companies, authorities and the general public to ensure a better internet for young internet users. Today, this initiative is marked in over 140 countries in the world. On social media, messages from the supporters of this campaign can be found under the hashtags #SaferInternetDay, #SID2021, #SigurOnline.