The Times: Comment - Media panics and regulating the net
Media panics make bad law, especially in relation to curbing paedophiles on the web, says David Rowan
LAWS rushed through amid media panics are often very bad laws. So let's pause awhile before celebrating the Government's plan to criminalise paedophile approaches to children on the internet, which The Times reported on Saturday. No one doubts that online "grooming" is a real and growing menace: since 2000, at least a dozen men have been jailed in England and Wales for sex offences involving children enticed into chat-rooms, and last weekend's newspapers showed how simple it is for men to misrepresent themselves to arrange meetings with 12-year-olds. But a law against "grooming" is not the answer. Far more urgent is the need for internet service providers, and especially parents, to remove their heads from the sand and take responsibility for monitoring children's internet use.
For a start, under such a law how would police gather evidence of criminal intent? If a suspect has lied about his age in arranging an encounter, would that be adequate proof of nefarious purposes? Or would any sort of sexual discussion preceding an invitation to meet be enough to convict? Would mere e-mail contact between adult and child justify police involvement - or would persuasion need to be involved, and if so, to what degree? Child-protection agencies seem to believe that the courts will provide adequate answers, but such a law, however well-intentioned, places impossible-to-define limits.
Please don't think that I am underestimating the threat. The case of Patrick Green, jailed in 2000 for sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl he met online, offers a chilling example of how easily sex offenders use false personae to gain their victims' confidence. Green, a 33-year-old clerk from Buckinghamshire, posed as a 15-year-old boy in a US Yahoo chat-room called Younger Girls for Older Men. For two months he exchanged messages with the girl, at one stage sending her photographs of himself naked, which he said had been taken by his 13-year-old girlfriend. Before arranging to meet the girl at Sutton railway station, he flattered her with a series of intimate messages. "I don't want you to be afraid of me," he wrote. "If you decide to meet me, we will meet in a public place to be safe."
Green manifested all the telltale signs of the classic paedophile predator, yet Yahoo failed to intervene - after all, ISPs merely provide the resources for chats to take place, and tend to respond only to complaints. Since then, Yahoo UK has taken a range of steps to minimise the risks to children, from publishing warning pages and parents' guides to displaying users' internet protocol addresses, which identify a specific PC. "We have taken a lot of measures to ensure that Yahoo is not an attractive place for paedophiles to be, and we will assist in any prosecution," a spokesman says. "But the internet mirrors society at large just as there are criminals out in the streets, so are they present on the net."
The ISPs need to go further and more actively monitor their chat-rooms for abuse, and quickly block news groups and discussion forums whose titles or content may encourage such activity. More importantly, parents should be taking a deep interest in their children's internet activities. It is no longer a valid defence for them to remain ignorant of their children's online world.
(The Times, August 14 2002)
LAWS rushed through amid media panics are often very bad laws. So let's pause awhile before celebrating the Government's plan to criminalise paedophile approaches to children on the internet, which The Times reported on Saturday. No one doubts that online "grooming" is a real and growing menace: since 2000, at least a dozen men have been jailed in England and Wales for sex offences involving children enticed into chat-rooms, and last weekend's newspapers showed how simple it is for men to misrepresent themselves to arrange meetings with 12-year-olds. But a law against "grooming" is not the answer. Far more urgent is the need for internet service providers, and especially parents, to remove their heads from the sand and take responsibility for monitoring children's internet use.
For a start, under such a law how would police gather evidence of criminal intent? If a suspect has lied about his age in arranging an encounter, would that be adequate proof of nefarious purposes? Or would any sort of sexual discussion preceding an invitation to meet be enough to convict? Would mere e-mail contact between adult and child justify police involvement - or would persuasion need to be involved, and if so, to what degree? Child-protection agencies seem to believe that the courts will provide adequate answers, but such a law, however well-intentioned, places impossible-to-define limits.
Please don't think that I am underestimating the threat. The case of Patrick Green, jailed in 2000 for sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl he met online, offers a chilling example of how easily sex offenders use false personae to gain their victims' confidence. Green, a 33-year-old clerk from Buckinghamshire, posed as a 15-year-old boy in a US Yahoo chat-room called Younger Girls for Older Men. For two months he exchanged messages with the girl, at one stage sending her photographs of himself naked, which he said had been taken by his 13-year-old girlfriend. Before arranging to meet the girl at Sutton railway station, he flattered her with a series of intimate messages. "I don't want you to be afraid of me," he wrote. "If you decide to meet me, we will meet in a public place to be safe."
Green manifested all the telltale signs of the classic paedophile predator, yet Yahoo failed to intervene - after all, ISPs merely provide the resources for chats to take place, and tend to respond only to complaints. Since then, Yahoo UK has taken a range of steps to minimise the risks to children, from publishing warning pages and parents' guides to displaying users' internet protocol addresses, which identify a specific PC. "We have taken a lot of measures to ensure that Yahoo is not an attractive place for paedophiles to be, and we will assist in any prosecution," a spokesman says. "But the internet mirrors society at large just as there are criminals out in the streets, so are they present on the net."
The ISPs need to go further and more actively monitor their chat-rooms for abuse, and quickly block news groups and discussion forums whose titles or content may encourage such activity. More importantly, parents should be taking a deep interest in their children's internet activities. It is no longer a valid defence for them to remain ignorant of their children's online world.
(The Times, August 14 2002)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, August 14, 2002
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