Rotherham MP calls for more action to tackle online child abuse
Sarah Champion says the government's not doing enough to protect vulnerable children online.
Rotherham MP Sarah Champion's told Hallam she's "incredibly concerned" about how widespread online child abuse is becoming - and says the government isn't taking it seriously enough.
She's leading a debate in Parliament later on the issue - calling for more to be done to make sure parents and children are aware of the dangers posed by those wanting to exploit youngsters online.
Sarah says paedophilia is changing rapidly and the government isn't keeping up:
"Historically what they would have been doing was over a period of potentially years, grooming 2 or 3 children. Now what 's happening is paedophiles are sending out 1000 messages online to children at a time and seeing if they can hook 1 or 2 children. And that happens literally in the space of minutes or hours."
"I'm incredibly concerned about how pervasive online child abuse is becoming in this country. Not only the crime scares me - it's also the fact that most parents don't know what's going on. Their children are vulnerable 24/7 because of their iPads, because of their phones. And most parents just are not aware of this."
Sarah wants the government to run a public awareness campaign on the issue - as well as improving e-safety education to make children aware of the dangers posed by paedophiles online.
She also wants resilience and child protection lessons before children enter primary school to teach them about how to protect themselves online and in real life - including issues of consent.
Sarah told us something needs to change:
"Going through school, you get e-safety lessons - but that's much more about protecting your data and protecting your identity. What we need to say to children is that there are some bad people who are going to try to befriend you and then you need to be really mindful that maybe they're not quite telling the truth when they're talking to you."
"The government is not taking the online abuse our children endure seriously enough. It's something that pretty much every young person I've ever spoken to is a real real issue to them. We're leaving them there exposed without the security, without the knowledge and without the protection in place."
The government say they're making "significant progress" on the issue.
They say e-safety's been a requirement in the computing curriculum since 2014 and they've introduced e-safety content in key stages 1 and 2 as well.