The Internet is becoming an increasingly dangerous place for children and teenagers in Pakistan whose online profiles often attract aggressive sexual predators. Criminologists warn that personal information posted online can lead to abductions and sexual exploitation of children. Paedophiles are finding new ways and new opportunities to network with each other on how to exploit children using friendly Web sites like WhatApp or Facebook as victim directories. Young girls who are innocently posting very personal information or their identities on these sites are setting themselves up for disaster. Predators use information publicly divulged in online profiles and social networking sites to identify potential targets. They contact victims, using deception to cover up their ages and sexual intentions. Then they entice unknowing victims into meetings or stalk and abduct them.
Recent media reports from Pakistan suggest that law enforcement agencies are facing an epidemic of such sex crimes perpetrated through a new medium by a new type of criminal. Needless to say, these reports have raised fears about the use of Internet by children and adolescents and about the safety of specific online activities, such as interacting online with unknown people, posting profiles containing pictures and personal information, and maintaining Webpages at social networking sites.
Access to Internet in Pakistan is fast growing and multiplying. Most Internet-initiated sex crimes involve adult men who use the Internet to meet and seduce underage adolescents into sexual encounters. The offenders use Internet communications such as instant messages, e-mail, and chat rooms to meet and develop intimate relationships with victims. In the great majority of cases, victims are aware they are conversing online with adults. Many victims profess love or close feelings for offenders. Many of the media stories and much of the Internet crime prevention information available suggest that it is naive and inexperienced young children who are vulnerable to online child molesters. Although adolescent immaturity may play an important role in the victimisations these youths experience, it is, undoubtedly, a different type of naïveté than that of preadolescent children. This distinction is important for developing effective prevention strategies.
To begin with, the characterisation of young people as vulnerable because of naïveté about the Internet itself is not accurate. By early adolescence, youth Internet users generally understand the social complexities of the Internet at levels comparable to those of adults when answering questions about good and bad things that can happen online and the need to exercise care. Then as youths get older and gain experience online, they engage in more complex and interactive Internet use. This actually puts them at greater risk than younger, less experienced youths, who use the Internet in simpler, less interactive ways. Among youth, it is those 15 to 17 years of age who are most prone to take risks involving privacy and contact with unknown people. Second, the characterisation of young people as vulnerable because they are innocent about sex does not capture the nature of the sexual issues that get youths into trouble online. The physiology of adolescent sexual development includes growing sexual curiosity, knowledge, and experience as youths make the transition from childhood to adulthood. Even in early adolescence, most youths are quite aware of, interested in, and beginning to experiment with sex. By mid-adolescence, most have had romantic partners and are preoccupied with romantic concerns.
Healthy intimate relationships and sexual development are the issues of concern when considering youthful vulnerability to online molesters. This is so for several reasons. First, face-to-face peer relationships are the context in which most youths learn to handle the decisions, emotions, and negotiations of trust and intimacy. The Internet-initiated sex crimes that are romances from the perspective of young victims typically take place in isolation and secrecy, outside of oversight by peers, family members, and others in the youths’ face-to-face social networks. This isolation may lead to relationships that form more quickly, involve greater self-disclosure, and develop with greater intensity than face-to-face relationships among peer. Second, a considerable portion of victims is in early and mid-adolescence. Few youths of those ages have the mature judgment and emotional self-regulation required to engage in healthy relationships that include sexual intimacy. Third, youths in their early and mid-teens often struggle with emotional control. When they are drawn into online relationships that include disclosures about sexual matters, the feelings that are generated may be particularly powerful and difficult to handle for youths just beginning to experience sexual desires. Fourth, intense romantic and sexual involvements during early and mid-adolescence are associated with a range of negative outcomes and may result in neglect of other important developmental tasks, such as academic performance. Finally, early sexual activity is related to a variety of risk behaviours. These bode ill for youths in terms of mental health and academic achievement .The factors that make youth’s vulnerable to seduction by online molesters are complex and related to immaturity, inexperience, and the impulsiveness with which some youths respond to and explore normal sexual urges.
There is an urgent need to make the public aware about the silent growth of online predators in Pakistan who prey on naive children using trickery and violence. Safety factor for the vulnerable youth is perilously close to danger and requires close monitoring by parents and cyber-crime investigation unit for further forensic investigation. Internet sex crimes involving adults and juveniles more often fit a model of statutory rape adult offenders who meet, develop relationships with, and openly seduce underage teenagers than a model of forcible sexual assault or paedophilic child molesting.
This is a serious problem, but one that requires approaches different from those in current prevention messages emphasiSing parental control and the dangers of divulging personal information. A developmentally appropriate alternative strategy that focuses youths primarily and acknowledges normal adolescent interests in extracurricular sports and literary subjects is desired. These would aim to provide younger adolescents with awareness and avoidance skills while educating older youths about the risks of sexual relationships with adults and their criminal nature. Particular attention should be paid to higher risk youths, including those with histories of sexual abuse, sexual orientation concerns, and patterns of off- and online risk taking. Psychiatrists, psychologists and teachers need information about the psycho-dynamics of this problem and the characteristics of victims and offenders because they are likely to encounter related issues in a variety of settings.
The writer is a member of the Diplomate American Board of Medical Psychotherapists Dip.Soc Studies, Member Int’l Association of Forensic Criminologists, Associate Professor Psychiatry and Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist at the Huntercombe Group United Kingdom. He can be reached at [email protected]