Pedophiles use social media to prey on children
MUHAMMAD AFHAM RAMLI
SHAH ALAM - The trend of swaying adolescent girls into sex via social media is alarmingly growing.
Pedophiles would sweet-talk the victims and deceive them by giving them gifts before exposing them to obscene acts.
Adolescents with bursting curiosity would then dare to log on to pornographic sites filled with inappropriate graphics until addiction struck them.
The perpetrators would then ask the victims to meet up where the sexual desire would eventually be quenched.
Bukit Aman Sexual, Women and Child Investigation Division (D11) principal assistant director Assistant Commissioner Siti Kamsiah Hassan said ithe suspect would take advantage of the victim by recording the sexual act either for financial or personal purposes.
She said between 2021 and 2022, a total of 3,360 rape cases were reported.
"In 2021, 1,605 cases were recorded while in 2022 there were 1,755 cases, thus showing an increase of 150 cases.
"During that period, the 13 to 15 years old category has the highest percentage of victims which is 1,788 cases followed by the 16 to 18 years old category (706 cases) over 18 years old (530 cases), 10 to 12 years old (325 cases), six to nine years old (58 cases) and under six years old (13 cases)," she told Sinar Harian in an exclusive interview.
Kamsiah said the 13 to 15 years old category recorded the highest number because the age group was going through a transition from childhood to early adolescence.
She said the concerned group was the most exposed to the internet and social media.
"One of the factor is the feeling of wanting to try something new, exposure to new things on the internet besides being driven by internet and social media abuse by those who would take advantage of children," she said.
Revealing the perpetrators' modus operandi, she said the suspects or pedophiles would pay attention to the children's interest on social media such as celebrities, idols and so on.
She said predators would start approaching their victims on social media such as on Instagram, Omi, Michat, TikTok and Wechat to get to know them as friends before building a relationship to gain the victims’ trust.
"From there, the perpetrator would start talking about sexual things, persuading and putting the victim under pressure to hand over pornographic pictures or videos.
"Victims who think they are loved would then send nude photos or videos and so on," she said.
Kamsiah said suspects can be of various ages and most of them were are older because they have the financial resources that enabled them to bait victims with gifts and cash.
"The feeling of wanting to try something new causes children to easily be lured into performing sexual acts and based on the statistics of sexual cases, 70 per cent of the victims are children," she said.
Elaborating further, she said victims who were involved in such situation will be threatened with their pictures or videos being spread to their family.
"There are cases of suspects threatening and spreading pictures or videos because the victims did not want to have sex with them.
"There are also cases where these children were threatened to give cash and some victims were pregnant until they finally got desperate and told their mother," she said.
She explained that in 2021, there were 183 blackmail cases of spreading victims' images or videos while in 2022, there were 133 cases.
She said this was a trend affecting children today.
“It would not take long for the suspects to persuade victims into having sex with them. In some cases, it took only one or two days. This is like promiscuous sex and they no longer care about religion and principles because they want to try," she said.
Kamsiah said rape cases in the country were alarming as 70 per cent of victims were children.
She revealed that in two years, the average total number of victims who became pregnant as a result of rape was 22.44 per cent or 754 people.
"For 2021, there are 22.74 per cent or 365 people while in 2022, 22.17 per cent or 389 people," she said.
She added that there has been an increase in baby dumping cases this year which were believed to involve minors and adults who were involved in promiscuous sex.
She said the sexual misconduct was influenced by the act of watching pornographic videos, among others.
"The police believe that victims' sex videos are also sold by suspects in private groups on Telegram.
"This group has followers who want child pornography because the police had detected the existence of this community based on the cases and investigations carried out," she said.
She said the police were consistently cooperating with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to block and monitor pornographic websites.
Strict monitoring on children's gadget usage should be done to protect them from being influenced by negative contents on the internet.
Kamsiah said parents needed to monitor their children's activities including their use of electronic devices.
"Check the websites your children have visited and identify all social media they regularly use.
"This is because there are cases of girls using their mother's mobile phone to watch pornographic videos after being exposed by a friend," she said.
She said parents needed to prevent their children from overly exposing their daily activities on social media and let them know that their actions could attract the attention of sexual offenders.
"Besides that, parents must be aware of the current crime trends and convey their concerns and awareness of such crimes to their children so that they can be more careful while socialising," she said.
Kamsiah also reminded people to not remain silent or conspire with perpetrators to solve a case the easy way or fulfill both parties' interests instead of taking action to defend the rights of the victim.
"Immediately, lodge a police report so that the criminal gets the appropriate punishment for their act. In fact, this is a preventive measure to prevent more children from becoming victims," she said.
Meanwhile, she said in an effort to overcome such crimes, the police will continue to improve measures and initiatives involving collaboration at various levels with various agencies that aimed to raise awareness among all members of society.
Kamsiah said that the crime may have a negative impact on the children's future.
"If many children slipped and collapsed following such kind of cases, it will destroy the future of the country," she said.
