NSPCC online safety warnings following Newcastle kidnapping
The NSPCC is calling for tougher age controls online to stop children accessing explicit content, following details that emerged in a kidnapping case.
The NSPCC say we need better age verification systems to stop children from getting easy access to disturbing and violent sexual content online.
It comes after two girls were detained for three years and three months’ yesterday for kidnapping a toddler in Newcastle.
The 13 and 14-year-old used sweets to entice the two-year-old away from her mum in Primark on Northumberland Street in April.
Although the toddler was found safe in a Gosforth park almost two hours later, a judge found she was at risk of physical or sexual violence.
Following the teenagers' arrest, a search took place and disturbing content was found on the younger girls iPad. Of 1,185 internet searches made since she got the device for Christmas, 402 were of a pornographic nature. This included rape, child sex, abduction and slavery.
Helen Westerman, Campaigns Manager at the NSPCC, says its concerning. She said:
“When children first see pornography, and that could be extreme pornography, they’re quite shocked and worried and disturbed by it however as children are more exposed to pornography that becomes normalised and children become desensitised to the content that they’re seeing.
“We need age verification systems so that children can’t have access to content which is clearly only suitable to over 18s.
“We need to be talking to our children about what they’re viewing online but we also need to put restrictions in place so that children under the age of 18 don’t have easy access to extreme pornography or sexually inappropriate sites.
“This will have been devastating for all concerned. Obviously the family of the child that was taken but also the families of the young girls that took the child.
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