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Comment by jcranberry | Hacker News Reader

>At least one in five children falls victim to sexual violence during childhood 3 . A 2021 global study found that more than one in three respondents had been asked to do something sexually explicit online during their childhood, and over half had experienced a form of child sexual abuse online 4 . Children with disabilities face an even higher risk of experiencing sexual violence: up to 68% of girls and 30% of boys with intellectual or developmental disabilities will be sexually abused before their 18th birthday 5 .

That is absolutely shocking.

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> had been asked to do something sexually explicit online

Is it? I'm pretty sure another teen / boyfriend / girlfriend asking for a topless or nude picture would count here, unless I'm missing something. It doesn't seem like it would be uncommon at all.

The 1/5 being victim to sexual violence does surprise, though.

Yes, and going into a public chatroom and being asked to "show boobs and vagina" by some rando certainly qualifies as "being asked for a sexual favor." This is how you manipulate statistics.

There's shockingly high stats, and there's ludicrously high stats from another planet.

20% isn't just high. It's so high there's no way you were walking around without noticing.

98% of people have been attacked before their 30th birthday. Really. They've been shoved, slapped, called a slur, publicly called incompetent and/or had items ripped out of their hands.

> going into a public chatroom and being asked to "show boobs and vagina" by some rando certainly qualifies as "being asked for a sexual favor.

~ 70 % of the reported harms occurred via a private device, meaning it was highly targeted, the reported events are mainly not things happening in a public setting.

For another happy stat you can for you to explain away, how about this: by age twelve, 6% of all girls have gotten sent sexually explicit content from someone they did not know.

https://www.weprotect.org/wp-content/uploads/Estimates-of-ch...

> For another happy stat you can for you to explain away, how about this: by age twelve, 6% of all girls have gotten sent sexually explicit content from someone they did not know.

Heh, hell, I'm a dude and quite a bit older but I've had this happen twice by accident (with me as the recipient, I mean). Wrong number I guess (it wasn't a phishing thing—I get shitloads of those, too).

>By age twelve, 6% of all girls have gotten sent sexually explicit content from someone they did not know.

Depending on the number of 12yo with email accounts and cell phones that wouldn't surprise me.

Close to 100% of people have gotten an out of the blue sexually explicit text or email by someone meaning to send it to someone else.

I'm not even giving them enough credit to try and explain anything away. What I said was meant as examples of obvious ways this can be manipulated, not direct attempts at explanation.

In a major assault on basic civil liberties, the burden of proof is on the assailants.

You care about those kids? Educate them and give them the tools to protect themselves, to protect their identity online. Instead, you trained them to sign up to shady sites everywhere with their real names, real phone numbers, the same email address tied to their real identities, to readily give their real names away and above all publicly post pictures and videos of themselves.

> In a major assault on basic civil liberties, the burden of proof is on the assailants.

That's a very grand thing to say after flat out stating you're just going to flat out dismiss any evidence they present ("I'm not even giving them enough credit to try and explain anything away").

What evidence? I haven't seen anything relevant.

> I'm pretty sure another teen / boyfriend / girlfriend asking for a topless or nude picture would count here

It only counts in the respondent reported that they were harmed by it.

Does that imply a large portion of our population are pedophiles? That is disturbing.

I'm not seeing that quote in the article, so it's hard to determine the methodology, but...

1. One pedophile may victimize many children.

2. There's a spectrum of victimization; that wording would seem to include things like being pressured to send nudes.

Victimized kids victimize other kids. Usually younger ones, and usually relatives. A lot. They don't all do it, of course, but many do. It's... all pretty disturbing.

Here's the study: https://www.weprotect.org/wp-content/uploads/Estimates-of-ch...

Yeah, the overall 57 % figure is the total out of four possible harms targeting persons up to the age of 18.

Because sending nudes to a nine year old is probably closer to what was meant with a paedophile, the following stats is probably a better starting point for putting a tighter upper limit:

> Of the female respondents who received [sexually explicit] content from someone they did not know, 11% were under the age of nine and 21% were under the age of 12.

You'd think pedophiles would probably find more than one victim during the course of their "career". Like even if they just go after one victim a year, that adds up.

It doesn't. It implies only an upper bound. Teen on teen counts as sexual violence against children.

No, because (a) the term "pedophile" properly applies to young children, to whom any sexual attraction is rightfully disturbing, not minor-age teenagers for whom sexual attraction is completely normal, but sexual contact is illegal due to reasons of power dynamics and consent ability, and (b) the stat does not distinguish adult perpetrators from child perpetrators.

It's a pandora's box of horror, if you dare to begin research it. We all need to though, otherwise it won't stop.

Here's an Australian Senator talking about a list of top level government people & politicians that are on a list that so far no one has investigated. (The list was sealed from publication by a Prime Minister for 90 years) https://youtu.be/t_FsQCxfb7k

Here's an article downplaying pedos, making them more palatable (2018): https://www.metroweekly.com/2018/07/tedx-speaker-argues-that...

Child trafficking: https://globalpressjournal.com/africa/democratic-republic-of...

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...

I've seen videos of people laughing at the camera after having just killed a child while being raped. The man was a white American. This is happening in every country.

A number of things really jump out to me:

* How are "sexual violence" and "childhood" actually defined here?

* Most people who I know who were victims of sexual violence as children were victimized by other children around their own age, in person. Very often it was a sibling, cousin, or neighbor. I don't see automatic CSAM detection actually helping this statistic all that much.

* "2021 global study found that more than one in three respondents had been asked to do something sexually explicit online during their childhood". Again, what defines "childhood"? When I was a teenager, I was having phone sex and video call sex with other people my own age. That would classify me as having been "asked to do something sexually explicit online" as well as being the other side of it.

* People with disabilities are at a really high risk of victimization in a lot of different forms.

This "Reasons for and objectives of the proposal" section conflates a really large number of things (Document is http://www.marinacastellaneta.it/blog/wp-content/uploads/202... ). It treats the following items as all being effectively the same thing with the same solutions:

* Minors being sexually abused online.

* Minors being sexually abused in person.

* Minors being sexually abused by adults.

* Minors being sexually abused by other minors.

* Voluntary sexual activity between minors of the same age.

* The victimization of disabled minors.

It also abuses statistics by considering all sexual activity of minors to be effectively the same (16 year olds showing each other naked pictures of themselves being the same as prepubescents being abused sexually by adults) and using statistics that include real world abuse to justify digital surveillance that won't even help reduce a lot of those numbers because the crimes don't even happen digitally. Even if this was 100% effective at removing all CSAM from the entire internet, how effective is that expected to be at actually reducing childhood sexual abuse? I know abusers consume CSAM, but in the absence of CSAM, are people going to be less likely to actually abuse children? Are people who abuse children now going to stop, and is it going to somehow prevent new abusers from starting? I honestly don't know the answer to this, but I'm skeptical to the idea that this has anywhere near the benefit that the proponents think it does.

> Again, what defines "childhood"?

The normal way one, under the age of 18. They do provide stats about one happening to children at the age of nine though, if you only wanna count the really tiny ones as children.

> I was having phone sex and video call sex with other people my own age

The question is explicitly about being asked to do something they were uncomfortable with, a mutually consensual interaction wouldn't count in that survey.

https://www.weprotect.org/wp-content/uploads/Estimates-of-ch...

The one in five is some sort of average and includes all sorts of things on the basis that it's really hard to be more precise as this is a field with extreme rates of under-reporting: http://web.archive.org/web/20120308074927/http://www.coe.int...

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