Exclusive
Status: 02/14/2023 5:00 p.m
More and more children are being sexually harassed online. VOLLBILD research shows how pedo-criminals place personal ads in order to get children through single mothers.
By Fabian Sigurd Severin, SWR
Pedophiles are currently using classified ad portals in a targeted manner to look for single mothers with children. Disguised as an erotic flirt partner or financial supporter, according to research by the SWRinvestigative format FULLBILDto manipulate single parents to later sexually abuse their children.
In some cases, pedophile criminals also try to establish contact with women who sell children’s clothing or toys. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) confirmed the research. The “possibly difficult (also financial) situation in which single parents can sometimes find themselves is exploited in a targeted manner”.
Classifieds exchanges in focus
This perfidious strategy seems to be particularly widespread on the Quoka and markt.de advertising platforms. On these, users can sell clothing, furniture and electronics, as well as place personal ads. In the past few weeks, the VOLLBILD editorial team found about a dozen questionable ads of this type on both platforms: “Male, looking for single parents who are having a particularly difficult time.”
On request, markt.de announced that it was already taking action against the abuse of the platform. The company has its own department that deals with pedophile crime and works with the investigative authorities. The site uses AI-based systems to identify suspicious users. However, with “enough criminal energy” it is possible to circumvent the security measures, markt.de admitted. Quoka did not respond as of press time.
The approach of establishing contact with children through single mothers is considered promising by pedophile criminals. This is documented by “manuals for pedophiles”. These are banned in Germany, but circulate on the Darknet, among other places.
The VOLLBILD editorial team was able to see excerpts from these “manuals”. For example, it says, “My first and top recommendation for finding children is to find and form romantic relationships with single mothers.” It describes in detail how child criminals can most easily come into contact with children and then abuse them.
Cybergrooming is increasing significantly
Nevertheless, according to the BKA, the perpetrators continue to contact the children mostly directly, because contact via platforms is comparatively risky. The initiation of sexual abuse of minors via the Internet is called cybergrooming. “What has changed with digital media is the possibility of abusing children and young people in front of the camera from a distance,” explained Julia von Weiler. She heads the aid organization Innocence in Danger, which works against the sexual abuse of minors.
According to the BKA, the number of reported cyber grooming cases more than doubled from 2019 to 2021: from 1754 to 3539. Authorities and non-governmental organizations suspect that the number of unreported cases is significantly larger. A study by the Media Education Research Association Southwest from 2022 provides indications of this. According to it, one in four young people has already been confronted with cybergrooming on the Internet.
Crucial information from the USA
Perpetrators often write to children privately via social media or the chat function of video games. The chats are mostly encrypted, which makes investigations by the criminal police more difficult. According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, decisive information about suspected child abuse on the Internet comes from the USA, because the operators of US chat and gaming platforms are legally obliged to report criminally relevant content to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
The non-governmental organization works to protect minors. If the NCMEC has any indications “that the perpetrator could be in Germany at the time of the crime – for example via the local assignment of the IP address – this information will be sent to the BKA,” the Federal Ministry of the Interior said FULL SCREEN-Request with.
According to the BKA, from 2020 to 2021 alone there was a drastic increase in cases of the distribution, acquisition, possession and production of depictions of sexualized violence against children. While the number was 18,761 cases in 2020, it rose to 39,171 cases in 2021. There is also a lot of child and youth pornographic content on the Internet that was produced by minors themselves.
From 2019 to 2021 alone, the number of websites on which minors themselves can find child and youth pornographic images almost quintupled. This is according to the latest surveys by the Internet Watch Foundation, a British agency for reporting on sexual abuse on the Internet.
According to the psychologist von Weiler, however, self-made does not usually mean that children voluntarily send naked pictures of themselves or even come up with the idea of masturbating in video chats. They would often be pushed to do so by their counterparts – including on live stream platforms.
Child abuse in the live stream
According to VOLLBILD research, the Omegle website is one of the platforms on which child abuse is increasingly being practiced via live stream. On the website, users are randomly connected to a stranger somewhere in the world. You can see the other person in the video chat, talk to him and write to him.
Omegle has existed since 2009, but has recently regained popularity among young people thanks to the social media app TikTok. There, the hashtag #omegle has around eleven billion hits.
In a self-experiment, a VOLLBILD journalist pretended to be a 13-year-old on Omegle. In half an hour she chatted with a total of ten men. She was sexually harassed by seven men in a video chat. Once she was asked to show her breasts. Men masturbated several times during the conversation; two of them even showed their genitals in the camera. On request, the BKA stated that the investigators were aware of the actions of perpetrators via live stream platforms such as Omegle.
Omegle told VOLLBILD that the platform takes user safety very seriously. Although users are solely responsible for their behavior while using the website, Omegle has introduced both AI tools and human moderators. The use of the platform is only permitted from the age of 18. In order to confirm the age, users only have to make one click so far.
EU plans regulation
For the Federal Ministry of the Interior, combating sexual violence against children has “top priority,” said a spokeswoman on request.
The draft of a regulation is currently being negotiated in the EU, in which the platforms should also be made more responsible. “With the present Commission draft, a uniform legal basis for measures by service providers in the fight against sexual abuse will be created for the first time throughout the EU,” announced the Federal Ministry of the Interior.