Published: Mon 18 Mar 2013
More people in Britain are concerned about websites showing the sexual abuse of children than other types of illegal, illicit or ‘harmful’ internet content. However, more than half of people in Britain currently say that they either wouldn’t know how to report it if they were to encounter it (40%) or would just ignore it (12%).
The ComRes poll conducted among a representative sample of 2058 British adults for the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) shows the vast majority of people in Britain think that child sexual abuse content (“child pornography”) (91%) and computer generated images or cartoons of child sexual abuse (85%) should be removed from the internet.
Followed by:
4% of men – the equivalent of one million men, and 2% of women, the equivalent of 500,000, report actually having come into contact with it, or have stumbled across it.
Four times the proportion of men who acknowledged having come into contact with child sexual abuse content (“child pornography”) (4%) say that they would ignore it if they stumbled across it (16%).
The survey also revealed some differences in views between men and women, with women being more concerned than men across all categories of material:
| Men | Women | |
| Child pornography | 80 | 86 |
| Computer-generated images or cartoons of child sexual abuse | 73 | 80 |
| Terrorist websites | 71 | 75 |
| Very extreme/violent pornography | 60 | 76 |
| Hate websites, e.g. racist/homophobic | 65 | 67 |
| Websites promoting suicides | 54 | 69 |
| Websites encouraging eatign disorders | 40 | 61 |
The results come as the IWF reports record times for the removal of online child sexual abuse content from UK public networks.
Throughout the whole of 2012, the Internet Watch Foundation logged just 73 UK webpages hosting child sexual abuse images or videos. This compares to 9,477 hosted in other countries around the world.
Of the 73 UK webpages:
But there is still more to be done explains IWF CEO, Susie Hargreaves.
Susie Hargreaves said: “There is clear public concern over the availability of images and videos of children being sexually abused on the internet.
“What is concerning for us is that not enough people know how to report this or would rather ignore it,especially considering the survey tells us that around 1.5 million British adults have seen this sort of content online.
“Although we’ve seen record removal times in the UK, during 2012 we saw a higher proportion of images of children under 10 years old being sexually abused.”
Ms Hargreaves continued: “We are also very aware that there are internet hosting companies in the UK which could do more, and faster, who are not members of IWF.
“We have a responsibility to do all we can to help protect children - and adults who were abused as children -from having their abuse viewed time and time again. We need to prevent people from stumbling upon this content and assist other countries in creating a hostile environment for hosting it.
“The problem is very much still out there, and is a great public concern, so our message is if you think you’ve stumbled upon child sexual abuse images or videos on the internet, report it to iwf.org.uk.”
Ends
Contact Emma Lowther, Director of Communications on +44 (0) 1223 203030 or +44 (0)7929 553679 or [email protected].
For a PDF of national and regional breakdowns before March 18, contact the IWF on the above details.
From March 18, the poll can be found at www.comres.co.uk
2012 trends and data published on Monday 18 March in the 2012 IWF Annual and Charity Report [Adobe Acrobat PDF - 3.81 MB].
A higher proportion of this content involved young children;
However, there was a drop in the amount of content we saw at the severest end of the scale.
We saw more sexually abused girls during 2012 – 75% compared to 65% in 2011
We saw far fewer sexually abused boys during 2012 – 11% compared to 26% in 2011.
Commercial child sexual abuse content:
Of 9,550 child sexual abuse webpages, 2,587 (27%) appeared on commercial websites. These are websites which provide people access to child sexual abuse images and videos for a payment.
Non-UK child sexual abuse content:
About the Internet Watch Foundation
The IWF was established in 1996 by the internet industry to provide the UK internet Hotline for the public and IT professionals to report criminal online content in a secure and confidential way. The Hotline service can be used anonymously to report content within our remit:
The IWF is funded by the EU and Member companies from the online industry, including hosting providers, internet access providers, content providers, filtering companies, search providers, trade associations and the financial sector. Working together, and sharing relevant intelligence with law enforcement agencies and international Hotlines,this partnership approach aids the removal of online child sexual abuse content wherever it is hosted.
For information about becoming a member of the IWF please email: [email protected]
Methological Note: ComRes interviewed 2058 adults online from 6 to 8 March 2013. Data were weighted to be demographically representative of all British adults aged 18+. ComRes is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules. Full data tables are available at ComRes.co.uk.
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