By Anne de Jonge | Project Officer
Despite the challenges this year because of Covid-19, our local colleagues have still managed to conduct raids.
From January until October, Free a Girl has rescued 74 girls and young women from situations of sexual exploitation and arrested 63 brothel owners, traffickers and customers!
Sexual exploitation of children not only happens in brothels. Many children are exploited via their computer, even at home or at school. Perpetrators use practices such as grooming, sexting and sextortion and offer the pictures, videos but also the children online. Although the more “visible” commercial sexual exploitation of children still exists, it is slightly decreasing. Perpetrators are adapting their strategies and sexual exploitation is exploding online. Our local implementing partners called for action and this is why we started this project.
Online forensics
The phenomenon of online grooming of children and exploiting them is not new: it has been going on for years due to the increase in technological features, tablets and smartphones. This is why special forensic tools and techniques are developed to reveal online sexual exploitation of children and abusers. By doing this research, combined with online detective work and close collaboration with specialized law enforcement agencies, it is possible to locate, identify and rescue many survivors.
Empowering local partners
This program aims to empower Free a Girl’s local partner organizations in India by sharing the new developed software to do online research. We encourage our partners to create a national and cross-border network with valuable local, national and international partners to tackle online sexual exploitation of children.
Moreover, we are developing an educational program to train all our local partner organisations so that they learn everything about online forensic research and interventions regarding the online sexual exploitation of children.
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