An overview of issues related to child pornography and paedophilia. Intended for computing students as part of a professional and ethical issues module. Warning - unpleasant content.

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Grooming and Pedophile
Crime
Computer Law and Ethics
Michael Heron

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Introduction
 There are dark and unpleasant corners of the internet where crimes occur.
 One of the darkest of these are those parts whereby child abuse is perpetrated.
 Getting a true handle on the scale of the problem is complicated by media
attention.
 It is difficult to tell if the attention given to the issue is proportionate to the scale of
the issue.
 Systemic reviews on the topic suggest that the prevalence estimates
range from 8-31% for girls and from 3-17% for boys.
 Where ‘abuse’ is defined as any kind of sexual contact between an adult and a
child.
 Issues of forced intercourse have an average prevalence of 9% for girls
and 3% for boys.

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The scale of the problem
 Any prevalence is too high, but estimating the true extent of the
issue is complicated by several factors.
 Media attention
 Differences in study measures
 Differences in study analysis
 Differences in study definitions.
 Difference in methodology
 In the majority of child abuse cases, the perpetrator is a family
member or someone close to the child.
 Specific percentages vary from country to country, but typically
range from 80-90%.

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The scale of the problem
 Between 2009 and 2010, around 23,000 incidents were recorded
by UK police regarding child sexual abuse.
 With between 2300 and 4600 of these involving strangers.
 ‘Stranger danger’ is real but disproportionate attention results misguided
attention.
 Online interactions with children follow a somewhat different
profile.
 The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre in 2011 recorded
1,145 cases of online grooming last year.
 In England and Wales there were 310 recorded offences of sexual
grooming.
 Again, reliable studies are difficult to find.
 Many incidents simply go unreported.

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Grooming
 The phrase ‘grooming’ has come to mean the act of gaining the
trust of a child with the intention of facilitating some form of
exploitation.
 Usually sexual, but other exploitations exist.
 In the United Kingdom, several laws cover grooming:
 Sexual Offences Act 2003 (England and Wales)
 Protection of Children and Prevention of Sexual Offenses (Scotland)
Act 2005
 These make it a crime to befriend children through any means
with the intention of meeting and harming them.
 Under the Sexual Offences Act, the maximum sentence is 10 years
imprisonment.

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Grooming and the Internet
 The extent to which underage internet users are contacted by
online predators is again difficult to gauge.
 Estimates put it at around 20% of regular users of chat rooms and
online discussion sites.
 Around six out of ten children aged three to seventeen use the
internet at home.
 The large majority of contacts do not progress beyond initial
exploratory attempts.
 The process is highly structured and managed, exploiting
psychology to normalise the prospect of sexual contact.

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Grooming and the Internet
 The majority of sexual contact stemming from internet
grooming is conducted online.
 In only 7% of reported cases do perpetrators attempt to meet the
child offline (as of 2012).
 Such abuse is conducted via webcams, instant messenger
applications and social networking sites.
 Contact follows a pattern of escalation.
 Friendly initial contact
 Evolution of psychological manipulation
 Threats/Intimidation
 Blackmail

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Grooming and the Internet
 Perpetrators make use of information gathered during initial
discussions to gain access to online social resources.
 Webmail / Social Network details
 The target is then coerced into obeying the perpetrator if they
want to get access to their accounts back.
 In the meantime, access to address books and friends lists
allows for a wider net to be cast amongst social networks.
 Perpetrators can act as like friends to get initial contact.
 This foothold can then be used to solicit or trick further targets out of
passwords, or into giving up identifying ‘forgotten your password’
type information.

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A Typical Progression
 The following is given in an Action for Children report on the
topic as a typical progression:
 Predator meets child in an internet chat-room.
 Experienced, long-term predators will already have established
community presence, and may be considered one of the
‘community elders’
 The predator will identify children in the desired age range by
interests, writing patterns and topics of discussion.
 They will then promote attention on that child, asking their opinion
directly during chats with an intention of building a ‘special
friendship’
 This then leads to an invitation for one to one private chatting which
then becomes an exclusive interaction away from the chat room.

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A Typical Progression
 Once in the private chat room, the discussion will follow a
particular direction.
 Prompt disclosure and then build a fake rapport by creating ‘me too’
revelations.
 Focus on current trends in clothes, music, sport and street talk.
 To begin with, the conversation will be wholesome and the
predator will make the attempt to come across as a ‘nice person’
 The private conversation becomes the key lever point to evolve
contact opportunities.
 Emails
 Text messages
 Voice contact

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Methods of Contact
 Any method is an appropriate one if it allows secrecy.
 Incidents have been recorded where predators have:
 Sent children mobile phones
 Paid for children’s top up credit so parents don’t become
suspicious
 Setting up free-phone numbers for children to call.
 These don’t appear on fixed land line telephone bills.
 Several key pieces of information are needed by the predator.
 Where the child’s computer is
 Who uses it
 What kind of monitoring is in place

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Progression
 The initial part of the grooming process is to build trust and
lower defences, as well as identify risks to the predator.
 If a child indicates any kind of knowledge of ‘safe behaviour online’,
it will normally result in the predator backing off.
 It also makes it less likely that children will report suspicious
behaviour.
 This then ‘softens’ the target for an escalation of psychological
tricks.
 Positive reinforcement
 Normalising of non-normal interactions
 Sabotage of confidence

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Progression
 At some point, the relationship will begin to exhibit sexual qualities.
 Often beginning relatively benignly as an attempt to normalise the relationship
and serve as a lever to further interactions.
 ‘Gradualisation’ of sexual content is handled by testing the boundaries of the
interaction
 As time progresses, many such relationships evolve to incorporate the
sharing and discussion of explicit pornographic material.
 Including material involving children, again for the purposes of normalising the
interactions.
 As children are coerced into performing for the predator, it becomes more
difficult for them to extricate themselves from the situation.
 The performing of activities becomes blackmail material.

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Progression
 Children are commonly coerced into:
 Watching sexual acts live via web cams
 Watch pornographic videos
 Listen to audio files
 This then sets the stage for a progression into direct participation.
 Sexually explicit text conversations
 Creation and sending of sexually explicit material
 Phone sex
 While only a minority of cases progress into actual physical sexual
abuse, the psychological damage associated with the above is
considerable.

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Predator Patience
 It is important that predators are patient with their targets,
because of the ease with which an online relationship can be
terminated.
 To counteract this risk, it is not uncommon for predators to be
grooming several children at once.
 If one breaks off contact, there are others lined up.
 Too much attention, or attention that is too intense too quickly
also raises the risk of disclosure.
 And in turn the risk of being caught by the authorities.

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Sexual Offences Act 2003
 Section 15 of the Sexual Offences Act covers the criminalisation of
these activities.
 A person aged 18 or over (A) commits an offence if—
 (a)A has met or communicated with another person (B) on at least
two occasions and subsequently—
 (i)A intentionally meets B,
 (ii)A travels with the intention of meeting B in any part of the world
or arranges to meet B in any part of the world, or
 (iii)B travels with the intention of meeting A in any part of the world,
 (b)A intends to do anything to or in respect of B, during or after the
meeting mentioned in paragraph (a)(i) to (iii) and in any part of the
world, which if done will involve the commission by A of a relevant
offence,]
 (c)B is under 16, and
 (d)A does not reasonably believe that B is 16 or over.

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Patrick Green
 In February 2000, Patrick Green made contact with a twelve
year old girl in an internet chat room.
 Initial contact led to email exchanges over a two month period.
 This in turn led to regular mobile phone discussions.
 Green used emotional manipulation to convince his target that
he was in love with her, and intensified his connection through
relentless emails and text messages.
 Initial requests for a meeting were refused, but the girl’s resolve
gradually wore away and she agreed to meet him in a public
place.

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Patrick Green
 Green arrived by car, identified himself, and then drove her
away to his flat many miles away.
 Four meetings were arranged in quick succession before the
girl broke down and told everything to her mother.
 Green was also working on another underage girl, and drove
hundreds of miles to be able to commit similar assaults.
 Some of his contacts were conducted using his workplace
computer. Colleagues tipped off police after accidentally
discovering some disturbing emails.
 Green was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment for sexual
assault and possession of child pornography.

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Conspiracy and Grooming
 There are upon occasion organised conspiracies aimed at systematically
grooming children for abuse.
 The nature of conspiracy legislation adds additional complexities to analysing
or prosecuting.
 The Criminal Law Act 1977 criminalises conspiracies:
 S1 - If a person agrees with any other person or
persons that a course of conduct will be pursued
which, if the agreement is carried out in accordance
with their intentions either,
a. will necessarily amount to or involve the commission of any
offence or offences by one or more of the parties to an
agreement or
b. would do so but for the existence of facts which render the
commission of the offence or any of the offences
impossible.

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Conspiracy
 It is a conspiracy if two or more individuals agree to perform an
indictable or summary offence.
 This includes if they don’t know each other or have no way of
identifying each other.
 There are several limitations.
 It is not a conspiracy if individuals are married.
 It is not a conspiracy is one of the individuals is a child.
 If another person in an agreement is the intended victim.
 A famous example of the third of these is Armin Meiwes, the
German cannibal who secured the consent of his victim.

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International Grooming
 An international investigation recently resulted in the conviction of
two brothers living in Kuwait.
 They had targeted 110 children worldwide, including 78 in the UK.
 Mohammed Khalaf Al Ali Alhamadi and his brother Yousef were
jailed for five years in December 2012.
 They worked exclusively online, tricking children into disclosing
passwords and then forcing them to perform sex acts on webcams.
 Often this footage is recorded and then added to the common
stock available online of child pornography.
 Around a third of explicit footage shared online involves children under
15.
 CEOP worked with Kuwaiti officials to try and convict in their native
country.

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International Grooming
 The global nature of the internet makes exclusively online
grooming activities difficult to track.
 The Tor project serves to create an open and anonymous network
running atop the internet and is popular for transmitting material too
sensitive for the internet proper.
 Lolita City for example is a child pornography site accessible only
through the Tor network.
 It contained around 100 gigabytes of child pornography.
 The ‘dark net’ of the internet means much activity is conducted
‘away from prying eyes’
 Members only boards
 Password protected servers

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International Grooming
 These are important issues for protecting children against the
risks of grooming.
 Technical savvy can complicate the task even further:
 It is difficult to track savvy pedophiles
 Where they can be tracked to is not necessarily where they
actually are.
 The accounts they have on various sites can be difficult to link
due to IP ranges, anonymisation and such.
 The best defence is education, although services such as
CEOPs work incredibly hard across international borders to
limit the risks online.

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Group discussion questions
 Television entertainment shows such as To Catch a Predator serve
to publicise the issue.
 What are the ethics of such shows?
 What are the implications for public perception of the issue?
 How far is such entrapment justified given the risks?
 How might the volunteers acting as children identify likely sexual
predators?
 To what extent should law enforcement be permitted to participate in
entertainment shows like this?
 How might internet predators be identified using the tools a
computer expert might have available at their disposal?
 How might a technically savvy internet predator cover their tracks,
and how might this be undone?