Internet may be to blame for growth of child abuse, psychologist says

5-10-2009 Scotland:

The internet may be responsible for creating a new breed of sex criminals, a leading clinical psychologist has warned.

Speaking in the wake of Scotland’s most serious paedophile conspiracy trial, Ethel Quayle, a child abuse expert, said that the opportunity to access instant images of abuse appeared to be responsible for the emergence of “novel behaviour” in some men, transforming the minority who may be potential child abusers into online voyeurs and potential sex criminals.

Dr Quayle is a former director of the Copine Project, whose five-part scale is an internationally accepted measure of the severity of child abuse shown in images. She was speaking following the conviction of a paedophile gang in Edinburgh for conspiring to commit sexual offences against children and for possessing, creating and distributing abusive images.

The prosecution case against the men was based almost entirely on digital data — e-mails, chatlogs, photographs and videos — shared between the eight men who were convicted of the offences. Dr Quayle suggested that the case and other recent convictions of first-time offenders pointed to the emergence of a new strain of behaviour and escalating levels of abuse.

“It might not have emerged without the opportunities offered by the internet. There is clearly a high compulsion among some people and a level of disassociation. Possibly people make judgments which are not rational,” said Dr Quayle.

One of those convicted at the High Court in Edinburgh, John Milligan, had more than 75,000 pictures and videos of child abuse in his personal collection, over 11,000 of which were Copine level four or five, showing acts of sadism or penetrative sex. Another, James Rennie, had nearly 800 videos and images at Copine level four or five. Rennie was also convicted of sexually assaulting a baby.

Dr Quayle claimed that there was an increasing tendency towards violent exploitation. She added: “Digitised images allow anyone to create content, still or on video. In a short space of time things have transformed. There is a drift towards the more extreme and the less consensual.”

Dr Quayle, a lecturer in clinical and social psychology at Edinburgh University, is the author of a number of studies which have connected the internet to a rise in sexual offences against children. Child pornography has existed since the development of popular photography, she said, but the ease with which digital images can be produced and their availability on the internet is “a cause for concern”.

She warned that for offenders, distinctions between online and offline abuse had blurred and that images and access to children had become a form of currency among sex offenders.

“The newer the image, the greater its allure as a commodity,” said Dr Quayle. “They act as a form of currency. Having something that nobody else has is extremely valuable and, in a closed community, it gives power. There has been an escalation of behaviour and increasingly you see a blurring of distinctions: fantasies and images are shared online, but real children are the victims offline.”

Law enforcement agencies expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the Edinburgh trial, in which the police were able to penetrate the on-line world of paedophiles who believed that they could not be captured. In particular, tracking techniques were used to identify Rennie, who had used his neighbour’s unsecured broadband networks to trade images of abuse.

Jim Gamble, Chief Executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) said that criminals would never attain anonymity on the internet.

“We are seeing time and again child sex offenders changing their tactics to avoid detection by law enforcement. Whether this is using other people’s unsecured wi-fi internet connections to share indecent images of children or using elaborate security measures in their paedophile networks, we are matching their response and turning technology against them.

“These offenders should know that every action online leaves a digital fingerprint which we use, amongst other tactics, to track these offenders down,” said Mr Gamble. ..News Source.. by Mike Wade