Increasing numbers of children in Scotland are contacting Childline to seek counselling after being sexually abused online.
The NSPCC's have seen an increase of 168% in the last year of calls to their free 24 hour helpline.
The majority of calls were about online bullying or social media issues, the biggest percentage increase was about online abuse.
Elaine Chalmers, area manager for ChildLine in Scotland, said that sex offenders use the internet to access indecent images and to groom children:
She said: “Social networks are an easy place to hide your real identity, and can be the first step in offenders encouraging potential victims to other sites or even to meet in person.”
The Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act recognises that sexual communication with a child or young person may not always end in a face to face meeting, and makes it an offence to send or direct sexual communication to a child or young person ‘for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification or humiliating, distressing or alarming the child’.
“The likelihood is that these figures are a drop in the ocean because groomed child victims often do not report abuse, and many young people don’t even recognise what they’re experiencing as illegal" Added Elaine.
“It’s vital that we encourage children and young people to talk about what they do online and who they communicate with. The risks involved in online contact are heightened in cases where children and young people feel they have to keep their experiences secret.
“Where you uncover inappropriate contact with a child you must report it – for every instance we know about, there may be many more children at risk.”
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