Child abduction and abuse cases around the world have started to increase with the widespread use of the internet. Emphasizing that families should educate their children from a very young age, Prof. Dr. Sevil Atasoy stated that every member of the society should be sensitive and underlined that the police should be notified as soon as the child goes missing.
Üsküdar University Institute of Addiction and Forensic Sciences Director and Vice Rector Prof. Dr. Sevil Atasoy made important warnings to families. Prof. Dr. Sevil Atasoy said the following:
"International criminal organizations are gradually increasing their commercial activities in the Darknet, in other words, the parts of the internet that we define as the dark net, the hidden net, or the deep net. This situation poses a serious threat to the health and safety of our society, especially our children and young people, who we know have access to social media and therefore have a high power to obtain information and are prone to apply new technologies.
Most of the victims are children
Every week, nearly half a million photos and videos of child pornography are uploaded to the internet. 78% of them are under the age of twelve. Half are under the age of eight. Behind every photo and video is a child who has been sexually harassed or abused. Eight out of ten children are girls. Despite being a crime, this material is shared millions of times on the Darknet, social media, forums, chat rooms and downloaded to computers.
The method of enslavement is used
Facebook reported that it deleted 8.7 million child abuse photos from its pages in the first three months of 2019 thanks to artificial intelligence applications. But this is not a solution. Unfortunately, 25% of the content is produced by a parent or caregiver, 25% by a neighbor or family friend, and the rest of the content is produced by strangers. These people first gain the trust of the child through a method called grooming, then normalize sexual intercourse, encourage keeping secrets, and finally convince the child to undress in front of the screen, take a photo of themselves, or worse, to meet, and this process can sometimes take months."
Missing children should be reported immediately
Prof. Dr. Sevil Atasoy stated that statistics show that children abducted for sexual abuse are unlikely to be found alive after 3 hours and emphasized that the police should be contacted immediately in cases of missing children. Prof. Dr. Sevil Atasoy made the following evaluations:
"We call a child who is not found where they are supposed to be "missing". Most of the missing children return home safely, and some of them are reunited with their families alive, even if some of them are damaged. A small number of missing children are abducted for various reasons, even by divorcing spouses or relatives. Sadly, some are abducted and killed for sexual exploitation. Statistics show that children abducted for this purpose are very unlikely to be found alive three hours later. Families report their missing children to the police after an average of two hours. In this case, there is no chance that the child will be found alive. Children are often attacked very close to where they are abducted, so the last place where they were last seen is very important. Every member of the society should be sensitive to this issue, learn about child abuse and its connection with technology, talk to children and explain the possible dangers, tell them that the photograph, age and gender of strangers they meet on the internet may be fake, get to know and monitor not only their own children but also the children in their neighborhood, and most importantly, those who have a missing child should report them to the police without wasting time."