“The Internet never forgets!” is DIICOT’s warning to teenagers who are tempted to send their own pornographic material to friends or colleagues. “Let’s not fall into traps like ‘I sent pornographic material with one view.’ And it can be stored. As soon as the pornographic material has left your phone, you no longer have control over it,” experts warn.

Child pornography is on the rise, with more children and young people taking pictures or videos of themselves in sexually suggestive poses and sending them to friends or colleagues, ignoring the risks they are putting themselves online, police and DIICOT officials warned at a conference. organized by Save the Children.

A child films himself and sends it to a colleague or friend, but it gets to the whole school or the Internet

Officials of the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police (IGPR) say that during and after the pandemic, the phenomenon of independent production of pornographic material has increased.

• “They take photos and videos of themselves in sexual positions. The number of cases is increasing from year to year. A child takes a video of herself and sends it to an unknown person – maybe a colleague or a friend – and it goes to the whole school or to someone on the Internet that she doesn’t know,” said Teodora Balkanu, deputy police commissioner at the Anti-Corruption Bureau. of organized crime from the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police (IGPR).

This phenomenon especially occurs when children start going to school and have access to the Internet.

• “Everybody has phones, they talk to each other, they start by sending pictures and videos to each other and then to other people they don’t know,” she said.

A representative of the IGPR says that the best way to prevent such cases is communication between parents and children:

• “We recommend all parents and teachers to communicate very well with children, and when we find ourselves in such a difficult situation where a child becomes a victim, we must come to the police, to the prosecutor’s office, to Save the Children, to NGOs and to any body or institution that can help us.
• The idea is that the parent can file this preliminary complaint without the child being present. The complaint is registered and forwarded for competent resolution. After that, a hearing is set up in a specially organized format, according to the protocol, in which we want the testimony to be taken accurately and the possibility of a re-hearing is excluded,” said Teodora Balkanu.

According to Gabriela Alexandrescu, the organization’s executive president, Save the Children has seen an increase in reports of sexually explicit material involving very young children, even infants and children as young as 5-7.

DIICOT Talks About Black Offender: Worryingly, Most of These Reports Are Not From Parents

Figures regarding the increase in the number of crimes in the field of child pornography were given by representatives of the Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT):

• “Registered cases of child pornography crimes are not increasing that much, but here we are talking about the black crime figure because they are not reported.
• What is troubling is that most of these reports do not come from parents or people who would have an obligation to make such reports. Most of the notifications come from online platforms through a mechanism developed in the US,” said Ana Liliana Cristea, a DIICOT prosecutor specializing in child pornography crimes.

Situation with cases registered in DIICOT for the last 3 years:

• In 2021, 103 appeals were registered, of which 13 cases were resolved by an indictment and three cases with a plea agreement.
• In 2022, 121 referrals were received, of which 29 cases were resolved by an indictment and 5 by a plea agreement.
• In 2023, there were 132 appeals, of which 22 were resolved, of which 3 by guilty pleas and 19 by indictment.

Not every naked child on the Internet is child pornography / How data is filtered from the US to Romania

According to the DIICOT prosecutor, the mechanism by which online platforms transfer to the competent authorities the data coming from the US to each country in Europe:

• “These redirects are either reported or the online platform has filters that, when pornographic material with a minor is reported, block the content and collect all the evidence necessary to identify the author, such as the IP address from which the discussion was conducted or the material was distributed. .
• From the US, this data is sent to Europe, where it is filtered and sent to each country. Here they reach the IGPR, where they are filtered again.
• Child pornography, the criminalization offense dealt with by DIICOT, only deals with pornographic material involving minors that is sexually explicit, not nudity.
• Not everything that represents a naked child on the Internet falls under this crime. There are tens of thousands of materials that need to be reviewed to determine which ones qualify as child pornography, and then they are distributed to DIICOT units in the country,” explained the prosecutor.

The case of a 13-year-old girl, a repeated victim of child pornography, is being investigated by the FBI

On Tuesday, she presented the case of a 13-year-old girl who repeatedly became a victim of child pornography on the Internet.

• “The girl was first bullied at school at the age of 7-8 and developed extreme social anxiety. He didn’t want to leave the house anymore, so he went online.
• Until she informed us about the act, she was the victim of five offenders, all of them foreign citizens. The last person she told us about was an American citizen whom she met through an Instagram story in which she expressed her mental state – she was sad and wanted to die.
• Around the time she was 13, she ended a long-distance relationship with a 19-year-old boy from France, and she felt like she couldn’t get over that moment.
• The post was answered by a user who told him that he understood and that he had also experienced the same situation,” said prosecutor Ana Liliana Cristea.

The dialogue with the stranger lasted for a month, the girl felt that she had a boyfriend who was listening to her, and without any sexual undertones, he ended up sending her pornographic materials.

The prosecutor said that when the girl’s mother found out that she had been distributing sexually explicit material, she refused to come to DIICOT, citing that “only mobsters and prostitutes come to DIICOT, and she is too embarrassed to be there.” such an institution”.

As a result, the girl filled out a form on the FBI website about what happened and was contacted by a federal agent, but she wasn’t sure he was who he said he was, so she reported all of DIICOT and found out that a federal agent did exist and the file went to the FBI.

How children are bullied through online games such as Roblox or Avakin Life

The DIICOT prosecutor also warned about how sexual predators prey on children through online games:

• “From what I’ve seen, young kids generally don’t want to play online games. For example, we had Roblox, which is very popular among children, and there is another game, Avakin Life, which has over 3.3 million reviews and over 100 million downloads.
• These games allow children to develop a virtual life, virtual friends, travel the world, buy expensive clothes and are preferred by young children
• Sexual predators find out how much time a child spends online, and based on how they build their house, what clothes they prefer, etc., they gather this information and get an idea of ​​which child has low self-esteem, social anxiety, or the fact that that he has no friends.
• In addition, although they have filters that prevent the transmission of email addresses or phone numbers, these games also offer a chat platform, and thus sexual predators manage to take the discussion to other platforms, where later pornographic material is requested, and minors believe that yes they win a friend they don’t want to lose,” explained the DIICOT prosecutor.

“Once pornography leaves your phone, you have no control over it”

He also addressed teenagers who think they can send pornography with one view:

• “For teenagers, there is one main rule: the Internet does not forget! Let’s not fall into the “I sent pornographic material with one view” trap. And it can be stored. Once pornographic material leaves your phone, you no longer have control over it.”

“It’s strange that parents are afraid of physically approaching their child on the street with a stranger, but they are not afraid of the online environment”

The DIICOT prosecutor believes that a child under the age of 12-13 should not have an account on social networks.

• “It’s amazing to me that parents are afraid that their child might be approached by an unknown person on the street, but we don’t have that fear in the online environment, where it’s much more dangerous and a person can make up a fake identity. .
• For the most part, sexual predators hide behind the avatars they create to pick up a pretty teen or girl until they gain trust. After providing the first pornographic material, the second and third follow,” warned Ana Liliana Cristea.

The prosecutor, a mother of two teenage girls, says she didn’t allow them to open social media accounts until they were 15.

• “I don’t know if it was good or bad, I wonder too, but I didn’t let them have social media accounts because of fears at work.
• The main thing is that when we gave them permission to do it, they clearly didn’t want it anymore, but the school required them to have an Instagram account to be able to participate in various activities,” she said.

9-year-old girl uploaded pornographic material to YouTube despite her mother, who was an IT specialist / Communication and trust are important, not spying

The most important thing to prevent such incidents or abuse is better communication between parents and children.

• “The key is communication. We don’t need to be afraid. We meet parents who have created fake accounts to monitor their children, who have bought parental control apps, but the moment the child leaves the house, they may be using a colleague’s phone or other online sources.
• After all, prevention is based on communication and trust. I don’t think we can constantly monitor our children, what they are doing and what they have access to.
• I had a case where the mother was actually an IT specialist, and she put some parental control apps on a 9-year-old girl, took her, as they say, a phone with buttons, and the girl still managed to do some internet streaming. things he uploaded on YouTube, why are you shocked,” DIICOT prosecutor also stated.

Romanian children start using social networks from the age of 5-10. Children under 5 watch videos and play games on the Internet

The age range in which the use of social networks becomes significant for children in Romania is 5-10 years, 32% of parents with children in this age state that their son / daughter uses TikTok, 21% Instagram, 19% Facebook and 17 % of Snapchat, according to a study conducted by Save the Children.

The study also shows that video content viewing is highest among children under the age of 5, at approximately 80%, and drops to 50% in the case of teenagers.

Photo source: Oleksandr Koltyrin / Dreamstime.com