 Please subscribe to this YouTube channel mentor talk can do press bell button for notifications. Namaste everyone, I'm Dr. Geeta Sekhon and I'm going to talk about online child sexual abuse and the impact of COVID. I'm honored and privileged to be a part of this new initiative mentor talk started by Hemant Bhattra as I believe it's a great platform to learn and share experiences. The world owes its children peace, happiness and security. This talk is my tiny effort in that direction. As Mahatma Gandhi said, if we are to have real peace in this world, we have to start with our children. Children have faced and continue to face multiple disadvantages due to poverty, vulnerabilities, lack of economic development in the countries and societies where they are born, child protection issues, sexual abuse and exploitation and now online child sexual abuse and exploitation as well. It merits spending a few moments on understanding and knowing what is this online abuse. Very simply put online abuse is the use of internet and cyber technologies to abuse children sexually and to exploit them sexually. There are various methods which are used by perpetrators, offenders, those who contact children online, they could be criminal gangs, they could be organized criminal syndicates, it could be an individual operating, it could be even a 19 year old and someone who is 80 years old. The offenders come from all spectrums of our society and the reason they contact our children online is to do what we call cyber enticement, grooming, solicitation so that they can then get them ready for child pornography or what is now also known as child sexual abuse material. They entice and groom the child to record performing acts on themselves which they are recording on the other side. This is just one example. The online abuse often also gets converted into offline abuse where the perpetrator then contacts the child and does physical abuse as well. So the online medium is used to either commit crimes online itself without any physical contact or then taking it forward and then into the real world committing sexual crimes against children. It becomes more serious when children are contacted for purposes of child trafficking, selling them for purposes of forced labour exploitation or sexual exploitation which may include child sex tourism, child pornography and much more. The point I'm trying to make is really simple. People of all ages, every human being can become a victim of cyber crime. It doesn't matter what age, what sex, what level of education and what level of awareness we come from. But within this entire gamut children are the most vulnerable. And why do we say that children are the most vulnerable is because we will have to spend a little time understanding the extent and the penetration of internet in our societies today. Well as they say that if you don't have data, you're just another person with an opinion. So I bring to you some simple data. As of December 2019, the world had 4.4 billion internet users. If we talk about India, we have 1.1 billion mobile subscribers which is about 87% of our population of 1.3 billion. We have 516 million internet users which shows a penetration of 41%. Of course it's more urban, less rural but the rural areas are picking up as well. These figures are from December 2019. We have Facebook users which amount to 217 million and it's a continuously growing community. In these figures I'm afraid I cannot give you a breakup of how many are children who use the internet and who use smartphones and mobile phones. But they are certainly a very very large number. And when we provide access of internet technologies, rightly so, when we provide smartphones to children coupled with low awareness among parents and children on different issues regarding cyber safety and security, we are creating a very deadly cocktail here. Not for a moment am I suggesting that children need to be deprived and denied digital citizenship. We need our children to be equal participants in the digital environment but with all the safety measures that they should know of, with their parents should know of and those around them who are responsible for their protection know of. Now with this kind of technology available to them through either their smart gadgets, through the apps which children use, through the internet which children have access to, which often has a camera and by which you can record and very very quickly disseminate those messages and videos about oneself. A great technological revolution but one which when given in the hands of children requires great care. If I can tell you about the crimes that are committed against children using cyber technologies, I would have to refer to the Crime in India report brought out by the National Crime Records Bureau every year. It's been only two years that the NCRB records data under this special category which is called Cyber Crimes Against Children. By 2018, the NCRB reported rather recorded only 234 cyber crimes against children which we all know is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many many more numbers which never get reported. What I mentioned to you earlier are crimes of a sexual nature but when children interact with each other on the internet using online technologies sometimes they themselves indulge in behavior which may not be illegal per se but which is dangerous and damaging. We've heard the terms bullying and stalking and when this moves online it creates much more danger to those who perpetrate it because even they are children under the age of 18 years and on those whom it is perpetrated which is the victim child at the other end and therefore it may not always be an adult doing this to another child. It may just be a child doing this to another child and therefore education about the safe and ethical use of technology and internet is a must. Now when we come to the impact of COVID and online child sexual abuse and exploitation what we are hearing from the Interpol, the European police, the Australian federal police, the US various helpline organizations both in India and abroad and one of the latest reports from India from April 2020 brought out by the India Child Protection Fund. We know that it is no longer anecdotal that perpetrators are very very busy contacting our children, your children, my children online. There are several parameters to indicate that there is a huge escalation in online child sexual abuse and exploitation and most important the online contacting of children. To give you just one example the India Child Protection Fund report suggests that by December 2019 there were five million uploads or demand and downloads which is the demand on an average in 100 cities in India which was surveyed by this report. In April 2020 it was realized that in the same 100 cities the demand for child sexual abuse material had shot up by more than 200% and there was more demand for child pornography which showed torture, violence and bleeding children. This is a very very scary proposition and it is going to escalate more because children are not in schools and they are spending more time online. Parents are also walking from home and either may not have the time to monitor or they may have a lack of knowledge on how to keep their children safe from the use of the use of cyber technology and therefore it is of utmost importance today to take some steps and to get some solutions to keep our children safe. The government has its role to play the police, the teachers, the NGOs, the media, civil society in general everyone has a role to play for sure but what is it that is immediately required in our homes today? I believe and I would very strongly recommend for parents of children of any age group to first inform themselves of what their children are seeing online. Who all are they interacting with? How much time are they spending other than attending their online classes online? And the dangers that their children are susceptible to. Once parents educate themselves they can educate their own children, their relatives children, their neighbors children, their domestic helpers children because every child today has access to the internet which makes them susceptible and highly vulnerable to online child sexual abuse and exploitation. It is in your hands, in my hands and through our knowledge empowerment to our children it is in their hands also to keep our children safe when they use internet. And I'm reminded as I complete this talk of what Guru Rabindranath Tagore said every child is born showing that God is not yet discouraged of man. We need to keep our children safe and provide them the world of peace happiness and security that they so deserve. Thank you very much.