Weak laws expose kids to ‘pervasive’ Internet sex abuse: watchdog

New technology is outpacing law enforcement’s ability to stop Internet child pornographers who have created an illegal business worth billions of dollars, an international children’s watchdog said on Friday.

The report issued by the Bangkok-based ECPAT International called for tougher national laws and co-ordinated industry action to protect children from abuse through new technologies.

Such abuse “is pervasive, causes deep and lasting physical and psychological damage to the child victims, and is outstripping the resources of law enforcement agencies”, said the group, which conducted the study as part of a larger United Nations report on violence against children.

The group’s executive director Carmen Madrinan said the report highlighted “the ease with which people who are intent on harming children move between the physical and virtual worlds in order to exploit a child”.

Cyber-violence against children documented in the study includes child pornography and “live” online abuse of children for paying customers.

Other abuses included stalking and bullying children online, and using the Internet to network for child sex tourism and trafficking, it said.

Most child pornography was traded online free but it had also generated an underground business worth billions of dollars that circulated millions of images of child abuse, the report said.

Most of the free websites with child pornography had been traced to Russia and former Soviet states, the United States, Spain, Thailand, Japan and South Korea, it added.

Half of the images of child abuse sold online were generated from the US while a quarter came from Russia, it said.

The two countries were also the leading hosts of commercial child pornography websites, followed by Spain and Sweden, it said.

An Interpol database contained more than 10,000 images of child victims but fewer than 350 of them had been found, the report warned.

ECPAT, which stands for End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes, called for tougher laws that would require Internet service providers to monitor their traffic for sexual images of children.

It also urged technology companies to provide pre-installed safety software on all PCs and mobile phones, and called for a global education campaign about the risks of online child abuse.