Child welfare organisations team up to reduce Sexual Exploitation and Abuse » Capital News
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 2 – Several Organizations including the Department of Child Services (DCS) have teamed up to find ways to help reduce Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (OCSEA).
DSC together with Child Fund revealed that there has been an increase in children abuse on the internet, highlighting that despite its advantages, some perpetrators use it to take advantage of children therefore asking parents to be keen with how their children spend time on it.
Speaking during a meeting hosted by Kenya Editor’s Guild (KEG), the children Officials explained how OCSEA happens, beginning from Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM) which translates to child pornography to its live streaming.
OCSEA starts with online grooming where a predator identifies a child and tries to earn their trust before striking.
According to a project coordinator at Child Fund Beatrice Muema, these offenders are mostly people already known to the child.
“Based on the children who were submitted to OCSEA and frontline workers, most offenders are someone the child already knows,” she said.
In conformity with the joint research project conducted by the global End Child Prostitution and Trafficking (ECPAT) network, International Police (INTERPOL) and United Nation Child Fund (UNICEF), 67 per cent of children aged 12-17 in Kenya are internet users.
Parents are therefore asked to keenly monitor how their children use the internet and their interactions to avoid OCSEA occurrences.
OCSEA can occur fully online or through personal interactions between children and offenders, some offer the child gifts or money in return to get sexual images or videos of themselves and some get blackmailed online to engage in sexual activities.
Muema noted that threats and requests like this happen to both girls and boys.
“Most children refuse these attempts; some children comply and this can have serious consequences,” she said.
DSC Assistant Director child online protection, Rose Mwangi called upon a multi-sectorial effort to help stop OCSEA.
“We are focused on building the capacity of children to enable them to protect themselves and ensure they have the first line of defense. We need to find them in their spaces,” she said.
“We all play a part in the protection of a child. It cannot be left to one single entity, it must be multi -disciplinary. We need to be proactive in the prevention of violation of child rights rather than responding,” she added.
She also asked journalists to be sensitive while dealing with stories concerning children as insensitivity can cause trauma to the child.
“As a reporter/editor children should be protected at all cost to ensure they are not stigmatised in future after the story is out,” she said.
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