Syed Azmi Alhabshi, a court adviser on child issues, told FMT he was sure that many cases had gone unreported if one were to use the legal definition of child pornography.
Under the Sexual Offences Against Children Act, child pornography includes producing the material, using a child to produce it, having access and possession of it and exchanging and selling it.
Syed Azmi said children’s involvement in pornography thus was on the rise if one was talking about children as either participants or audience or about adults watching the material.
He said unreported cases were often those in which the perpetrators were known to the victims.
“It is a fact that 90% of predators are known to the child.”
He added that the fear of repercussions would prevent incidents from being reported.
He also said it was a mistake to believe that children coming across such material, by accident or otherwise, would not be stimulated by it or will forget about it.
Last Wednesday, police said 45 cases of child pornography were reported between March 18 last year and April 29 this year.
This was an increase of 27 cases from figures gathered between from Feb 18, 2019, and March 17, 2020, a day before the first movement control order (MCO) was imposed.
Syed Azmi said children cooped up at home were at risk of being exposed to pornography.
“With greater access to gadgets, it is only logical that the numbers have increased,” he said.
He also spoke of children being enticed through social media to perform obscene acts.
He said one way of addressing the menace was for parents to increase their interest in what their children were doing online, especially on social media.
Children should be corrected if they started displaying sexual behaviour, he said. Sometimes this would indicate they were imitating what they had seen and parents should seek professional help, he added.
He also said another red flag was if parents stopped becoming a point of reference for their children.
“If your child has been hiding things from you, that means you are no longer a point of reference, then there’s a problem.
“It is something to worry about and need to be addressed as soon as possible.”