Foreword
Over the past decade, The Koons Family Institute on International Law & Policy has worked to address numerous child protection issues through the development of tools and resources that facilitate greater awareness and improved capacity of policymakers, child-serving professionals, and the public worldwide. Child Pornography: Model Legislation & Global Review, first released in 2006, has become ICMEC’s long-running rule of law project. We are currently working on the 9th Edition, which, when released will have a slightly new title: Child Sexual Abuse Material: Model Legislation & Global Review. This shift in terminology is consistent with the evolution of the global discussion surrounding these issues and more accurately reflects the true nature of the crime that is committed against the child. The report laid the groundwork for our approach to gaining a better understanding of the global legislative landscape as it relates to child sexual abuse material. From the beginning, the report noted the connection between the production of child sexual abuse material and sexual grooming of children, though grooming was a little-known issue then. In recent years, there has been an increasing number of reports related to online grooming of children for sexual purposes – when an adult communicates online with a child under the age of 18 in order to establish an emotional connection or relationship with the child and gain their trust for the purposes of sexual abuse or exploitation.1 This growing trend prompted us to undertake a new global review, using the same approach, focused on online grooming.
While child grooming takes place both face-to-face as well as online, the Internet poses a particular challenge, as those seeking to victimize children take advantage of the relative anonymity online interaction provides. Children may be unsupervised or minimally supervised when online and are generally more willing to share information and trust that the person with whom they are interacting is a friend. Once a trust relationship has been established, children may be pressured and manipulated into engaging in sexual activities like sexual conversations, creating sexual images and videos, or interacting over webcam with the groomer.2 Children may not even understand that they are being groomed for future sexual abuse until it is too late.
The grooming process can happen quickly, within a matter of minutes in some cases,3 but the negative impact on the victim is often long-lasting.4 It is therefore imperative that parents/guardians and children alike have access to information about the risk of online grooming, and that resources be available to support victims and their families when such abuse occurs. To curtail this growing phenomenon, policymakers, law enforcement agencies, and child-serving professionals must work to take legislative action to prevent, identify, and prosecute online grooming of children.
Realizing the importance of considering various cultural, religious, socio-economic, and political norms, our model legislation resembles more of a menu of concepts that can be applied in all countries throughout the world as opposed to actual statutory language.
The model legislation consists of a number of fundamental topics/provisions that are essential to a comprehensive legislative strategy to combat online grooming. It is divided into three parts:
(1) Definitions; (2) Offenses; and (3) Sanctions and Sentencing.
This is followed by an overview of related regional and international law, as well as a discussion of implementation and good initiatives. The final section contains a global review of countryspecific legislation. It is important to note that the legislative review accompanying the model legislation is about assessing the current state and awareness of the problem, and learning from one another’s experiences. Additionally, a country’s lack of legislation specific to online grooming of children for sexual purposes does not mean that other forms of child sexual exploitation and child abuse are not criminalized. We hope that this report, like Child Sexual Abuse Material: Model Legislation & Global Review, will be studied and used towards the goal of making the world a safer place for all children and that it will inspire progress similar to what we have seen with regard to child sexual abuse material. As a global community, we must strive together to ensure that children are better protected from sexual exploitation and abuse.
1 2 3 4 National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), Grooming: What it is, signs and how to protect children, at https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/child-abuse-and-neglect/grooming/ (last visited Jun. 30, 2017) (on file with the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children). Helen Whittle et al., Victims’ Voices: The Impact of Online Grooming and Sexual Abuse, UNIVERSAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY 1(2): 59-71, 2013, at http://www.hrpub.org/download/201308/ujp.2013.010206.pdf (last visited Jun. 27, 2017) (on file with the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children). Dr. Rowenna Baldwin, Children at risk of grooming in as little as 18 minutes, British Science Association, at http://www.britishscienceassociation.org/news/children-at-risk-of-grooming-in-as-little-as-18-minutes (last visited Sep. 5, 2017) (on file with the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children). Helen Whittle et al., supra note 2, at 59-60.