THE law in Cyprus falls seriously short when it comes to protecting children from internet crime, the Chairman of the House Crime Committee warned yesterday.
AKEL’s Costas Papacostas was speaking after yesterday’s closed meeting, where deputies began discussion on the Committee’s final report on ways to amend legislation regarding internet crime – child pornography in particular – before it is submitted to the Plenum for approval.
DISY deputy Tasos Mitsopoulos said the Committee’s evaluation of current laws had shown up serious loopholes. Out of the 26 incidents of child abuse reported in Cyprus during 2006, he said, only one reached court, and the punishment was a mere six months’ imprisonment converted to a three-year suspended sentence.
“Very few cases reach the police, likely due to parents’ and victims’ preconceptions and reservations to make such a thing known,” Mitsopoulos explained, adding that parents and victims were also afraid of riling the international network of child abusers.
He added that, according to European statistics, one in five children who visit internet chat rooms are sexually harassed.
There is a 40 per cent global increase in child porn material every year, while 20,000 new child sex abuse images are uploaded to the internet each week. Twenty per cent of web pornography involves children.
“At this stage, the police have assured us that there are no Cypriot children involved in [the production of] child pornography,” said Mitsopoulos, adding, however, that Cypriots were involved in reproducing and distributing such material.
“But it appears that we may very well have moved into the next stage – production,” he added.
The estimated annual turnover of the child porn business is a staggering 4 billion euros, made through an approximate 100,000 related websites.
In Cyprus, Mitsopoulos said that 70 per cent of parents are not aware which service to turn to if they wish to report the discovery of indecent material on the web.
He also said that 95 per cent of Cypriot children who visit pornography sites do so when their parents are absent, while such sites are most frequently used by 17-year-olds.
“I was recently told by a young teacher that he had been approached by a nine-year-old pupil, who asked him if he had sexual relations with animals. I wonder how a child that young would know of such perversions. He evidently picked it up from the web,” said Mitsopoulos.
According to the DISY deputy, a child psychologist had been addressed for the specific case, who said it was strange for a child that age to think such things unaided. “He must have seen it somewhere.”
He pointed out the dangers of mobile phones that produce images and videos, saying that youths are unknowingly becoming part of the production of child porn and victims of distribution.
“The fact that the amount of child porn incidents the police were asked to investigate doubled in 2006 compared to the year before is of great concern and this is why we are here, attempting to amend legislation and offer a concise legal framework to deal with such problems,” Mitsopoulos concluded.
