News Numbers of COCSA cases rising starkly

[Ecdysis]

Ugh... kids these days having online access to porn in all sorts of extreme forms was bound to have an effect...

I know we don't do trigger warnings here, but the case descriptions in the video are upsetting, so watch with discretion.

From the description of the video:

"Children sexually abusing children is a 'crisis', according to the National Association for People Abused in Childhood. Sky News has been given exclusive access to the charity’s helpline, as police chiefs warn that unless action is taken now, we risk criminalising a “generation of children”."

 

[Dark.Green.Feathers]

i’d believe it, kids have all kinds of unregulated internet access, and porn isnt just easily accessible but sexualised content (and straight up pornography) is floating around all the popular social medias, you don’t even have to be looking for it. and a scary portion of that content is specifically sexual abuse, presented as entertainment/romance/sexy/harmless coping mechanism/etc.

it’s egregiously bad in spaces that kids and young people like to go, (“communities” centred around art, storytelling, cartoons, tv shows, video games, fashion, anything about poor mental health, memes) and also in spaces online framed as specifically for kids (videos featuring popular kid’s tv/video game characters, “funny” videos/compilations aimed towards children, channels/accounts targeted towards children).
i’ve seen and heard it all first hand, and with young family members who are reasonably well moderated and i know for a fact have not been looking for or getting in proximity to sexualised media otherwise. And often times they don’t know the nature of what they’re encountering because of how it’s presented, so teaching them to tell if they see something inappropriate is not enough. Not knowing does not mean they can’t be shaped by it.

this isn’t to scaremonger but in the age of unregulated sexual behaviour/content parents have to be more diligent than ever.
the internet is not a daycare for kids.

 

[beaneeboo]

Thanks for posting this @Ecdysis ... this is the first thing I've seen which seems a bit more encouraging in the sense that cocsa is beginning to be recognised as an actual form of abuse... and one to take seriously...a few years ago this concept wasn't around openly... wasn't a thing... 5 years ago I had to do loads of research to find scraps of information about cocsa when I was trying to define my own experience... and part of the denial in my own experience of cocsa (rape by another child over about 18 months - possibly more) was that the concept that, what i experienced, couldn't have been labelled as abuse just didn't exist. Because it was done by another child not massively dissimilar in age...

Hearing this video shows me the huge leap in recognition that's happened in the last few years...and that's a good first step. I think cocsa is one sa area where victims get told their experience wasn't abuse because it's just 'kids being kids'... and that would cause outage in the same scenario playing out between adults... when physicall, sexual, emotional lines are crossed by anyone, with an intent to hurt or gain gratification, and even without an intent to hurt or gain gratification... it's still boundary violation for that person's body and soul... just because little Tommy was only 7 when he took dad's shot gun and shot his friend doesn't mean his friend should get over it because Tommy is only 6 and didn't understand fully what he was doing...

Time for change! Education and knowledge is power... we need to start teaching our kids at home, at school and phones need WAY tighter regulations... it's a nightmare but we have to keep going with it