Abuse shocking but not surprising, warns World Vision UK

The discovery of an organised crime group sexually exploiting children in the Philippines, using webcams to stream the abuse to the UK is shocking, but not surprising, warns the international children’s charity, World Vision.

Erica Hall, Senior Child Protection Adviser at World Vision UK, said: “It is difficult to gather precise statistics about the prevalence of this sort of abuse, but we are certainly hearing about it more and more.

“The widespread use of webcams coupled with the extreme economic vulnerability of children in many parts of the world makes this sort of abuse all too easy to perpetrate.

“Even if paedophiles are not allowed or can’t afford to travel to these places, the technology enables them to get to children remotely.

“People in the UK are more aware of the levels of desperation that exist in the developing world than they used to be, and they exploit that.”

Ms Hall adds: “Abusers frequently rationalise to themselves that childhood has a different meaning in places like the Philippines and tell themselves that they are helping the family by giving them money.”

World Vision takes child protection very seriously in all of our work. We run programmes around the world to raise awareness of the dangers of cyber-exploitation and support children and families in vulnerable communities.

World Vision is also part of the Virtual Global Taskforce, which combats sexual exploitation online around the world. Since it was established in 2003, the VGT has rescued hundreds of children around the world from sexual abuse and conducted numerous targeted law enforcement operations into online and offline offending, resulting in more than 1000 suspects being investigated, identifying and holding to account hundreds of child sex offenders worldwide.

Children living in extreme poverty are particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation and abuse. Our programmes are designed to help limit that vulnerability and also to help children recover from abuse they may have suffered. Young people who are separated from their parents either following natural disasters or because their parents are forced to migrate to find work are especially at risk.

World Vision recently published a study on the phenomenon of child trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation,that examines some of the underlying causes.