Internet Child Porn Business Explodes: Part II

Violence against children in cyberspace on rise.

BANGKOK, Nov. 11 (Xinhuanet) -- An increasing number of children are exposed to serious violence through the Internet and other cyber technologies due to the development of new information and communication technologies, a newly-launched report said on Friday.

The report, issued by End Child Prostitution, Child Pornographyand Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purpose (ECPAT) International, draws the latest knowledge on cyber violence against children, which causes deep and lasting physical and psychological damage to the child victims.

The report covered such forms of cyber violence against children as child pornography, live online sexual abuse for paying customers, online sexual solicitation and child sex tourism and trafficking.

It warned people of the scale and changing forms of cyber violence with web cameras, online multiplayer games and the teen website as the problem has grown pervasive and is outstripping the resources of law enforcement agencies.

Deborah Muir, coordinator and author of the report, in a presentation to the press, estimated the child pornography industry to be worth billions of dollars a year, although most child sex abuse images are traded for non-monetary gain.

She noted that more than half of the child sex abuse images sold for profit are generated from the United States, followed by Russia, Spain and Sweden.

In Asia and Africa, the rapid spread of mobile phones with highspeed Internet and large file capacity also provide children easy access to harmful materials, Muir said.

Sanphasit Koompraphant, director of Center for the Protection of Children's Rights, told Xinhua that sex abuse against children increased every year in Thailand. In 2004 alone, some 20,000 children in the kingdom have been sexually abused.

"However, the majority of offenders have not been prosecuted as they were family members or someone who were close to the child victims," he said.

Sex trafficking for labor exploration tends to be another field of violence against children. Some workers who have been trafficked from other countries and illegally hired in Thailand were frequently abused by their employers physically and sexually.

[...] While displaying the need for urgent, wild-ranging actions by all sectors to fight the rise of violence against children in cyberspace, the report also called for the development and implementation of worldwide industry standards for child protection by an international IT working group.

Individual IT companies should implement codes of conduct to protect children and provide safety information and pre-installed safety software with every purchase of a PC or mobile phone, it said.