The use of virtual reality headsets by paedophiles in England and Wales has been documented for the first time, according to police data obtained by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).
The NSPCC obtained data through the Freedom of Information Act from police forces in England and Wales, and said 30,925 offences involving obscene images of children were reported in 2021–22, the highest number ever recorded and a 66 percent increase over the last five years.
In their report, the NSPCC said virtual reality technology was documented eight times by police forces in crime reports from those years. This is the first time such technology has been mentioned specifically.
The NSPCC said Snapchat was now the app most commonly used to share child abuse images, a change from 2021 when Instagram was the app most frequently used by paedophiles.
Snapchat was registered in police crime reports 4,293 times, compared to 1,363 mentions of Instagram, 1,361 of Facebook, and 547 reports of the use of WhatsApp.
Roxy Longworth was 13 when she was contacted by an older boy on Facebook who coerced her into sending intimate images to him on Snapchat.
She said he sent them on to his friends and that she was then blackmailed and manipulated into sending more images, which were shared on social media.
Longworth told the NSPCC: “I sat on the floor and cried. I’d lost all control and there was no one to talk to about it. I blocked him on everything and prayed he wouldn’t show anyone the pictures because of how young I was.”
Sir Peter Wanless, chief executive of the NSPCC, said: “These new figures are incredibly alarming but reflect just the tip of the iceberg of what children are experiencing online.”
‘Online Sexual Abuse Risks Becoming Normalised’
Wanless said: “We hear from young people who feel powerless and let down as online sexual abuse risks becoming normalised for a generation of children.”
He called on the government to create the post of child safety advocate who would “stand up for children and families,” and he said: “It would be inexcusable if in five years’ time we are still playing catch-up to pervasive abuse that has been allowed to proliferate on social media.”
Wanless said the government’s proposed Online Safety Bill needs to make sure abuse is “systemically” prevented.
The NSPCC also called on Meta “to pause plans to roll out default end-to-end encryption of Facebook and Instagram messenger services”—which they said would make it impossible “to identify grooming and the sharing of child sexual abuse images.”
The data echo figures in the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) published in October 2022.
Professor Alexis Jay, who chaired the seven-year inquiry, said: “The latest statistics suggest that the age at which children become victims is getting younger. The number of sexual abuse offences, recorded by the police, where the victim was a child under the age of 4 has risen by 45 percent in recent years.”
Jay also specifically mentioned new technology.
‘Truly Sinister Application’ of New Technology
She said: “New products designed with benign intent can become tools of truly sinister application for abusers. For example, a new product that enables ‘bare hands tactility’ allows sexual predators to feel and be felt by their victims, without the need for physical contact.”
A government spokesman told PA Media: “Protecting children is at the heart of the Online Safety Bill and we have included tough, world-leading measures to achieve that aim while ensuring the interests of children and families are represented through the Children’s Commissioner.”
“Virtual reality platforms are in scope and will be forced to keep children safe from exploitation and remove vile child abuse content. If companies fail to tackle this material effectively, they will face huge fines and could face criminal sanctions against their senior managers,” he added.
A Meta spokesman told The Epoch Times: “This horrific content is banned on our apps, and we report instances of child sexual exploitation to the National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children.”
He said: “We lead the industry in the development and use of technology to prevent and remove this content, and we work with the police, child safety experts and industry partners to tackle this societal issue. Our work in this area is never done, and we’ll continue to do everything we can to keep this content off our apps.”
PA Media contributed to this report.
