The pandemic has motivated abusers to perfect their methods of sexually exploiting children online. Moldova is no exception

Millions of attempts to view child sexual abuse content online have been blocked during the isolation period. Tens of thousands of such content have been uploaded to the Internet from the territory of the Republic of Moldova. However, in the first half of the year, the specialists of the IC La Strada Moldova registered only 36 such cases.

What do the statistics of international organizations in the field say

The US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) saw a 106% increase in reports of suspected cases of sexual exploitation of children. During the isolation period, the Internet Watch Foundation (a British charity responsible for identifying and removing photo and video content depicting child sexual abuse from the Internet) has blocked at least 8.8 million attempts from UK internet users to access pictures and films of sexually abused children.

The production of banned content with the involvement of children from the Republic of Moldova, to be uploaded and marketed on the internet, is an older concern of specialists in the field. In 2019, the NCMEC Hotline registered 10,516 child sexual abuse materials uploaded online from the Republic of Moldova. The indicators are comparable to those reported in Austria (10,217) or Angola (10,163), but more alarming than the figures reported by Cybertipline in Switzerland (8,567), Norway (8,031), Slovakia (6,769), Slovenia (6,890), Georgia (6,157) or Finland (4,850).

In addition to the drastic increase in the number of cases of child abuse and sexual exploitation in the online environment, experts in the field have found an adjustment in the methods of operation of abusers since the beginning of this year. On the one hand, they have become much more "impatient" in approaching the child directly; on the other hand, they resort to more treacherous exploitation techniques.

The abuser minimizes the "preparation" time of the child for abuse.

International trends were also confirmed by the La Strada Moldova team. One of the representative cases in this respect is the situation of beneficiary A, aged 13 years. The child was approached by the abuser on a social network and, just one hour after initiating the communication, the victim was sent sexually explicit content and was asked very insistently, even aggressively, to produce and send similar content.

The abuser returns to exploit the relationships built before the pandemic.

Another beneficiary of the Issues Affecting Children Program says that she was blackmailed with the photos and videos she had sent to a person she met online in the fall of 2019 and with whom she considered that she was in a love relationship with. After a communication that lasted several months, her boyfriend "disappeared", only to write to her again this April and ask her to send new explicit intimate content. When the child refused, the abuser threatened that he would distribute of the materials she had sent previously.

In the first half of the year, the number of online sexual abuse cases involving underage children registered by IC La Strada Moldova has increased by three times compared to the same period last year. Mostly, the children themselves asked for our help or just wanted to tell us about the problem they were facing. This is another significant difference that we noticed in the behaviours of our underage beneficiaries, conditioned, most likely, by the social isolation imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic. So far, most child abuse cases have been reported to us by third parties, especially by the child's friends or schoolmates. You can find more details about the specifics of the cases managed by the SigurOnline specialists in the first semester of 2020 here.

The specialists of the Issues Affecting Children Program remind parents, caregivers, and teachers that, during the isolation period and especially during the summer holidays, when children have much free time, we need to take into account the following rules and helpful information:

• Keep in mind that both girls and boys can become victims of online sexual abuse;

• Do not punish the children who have chosen to confide in you, telling you that they are going through a complicated situation in the online environment. Listen, do not judge and assure them that the only person to blame for what happened to them is the abuser, never the child;

• Access secure online resources to learn how to initiate a discussion with the child about the risks of sexual exploitation on the Internet;

• Report cases of online sexual abuse to the police or specialized counseling and support services.