LONDON, Jan 15 Thomson Reuters Foundation - A growing number of girls as young as 11 are being tricked or coerced into sharing selfies of themselves being sexually abused online, a charity that removes such content said on Wednesday. The UK-based Internet Watch Foundation IWF said it responded to more than 37, reports of online child sex abuse recorded by the victims themselves in the first 11 months of - most of whom were girls estimated to be aged 11 to In a fast-growing form of online sex crime, abusers pressurise girls to record themselves naked or performing sex acts on their computer webcams, which abusers may then re-share, said the IWF. The new figures were released a month after a survey of police officers based in the United States and dozens of other countries found that the majority of live-streamed child sex abuse via webcam was generated by the victims themselves. Half the officers said most victims appeared to be producing the videos voluntarily, while a third said most cases involved victims "induced" to sexually abuse themselves online through coercion or deceit, said the report by IT firm NetClean. Our global editorial team of about 55 journalists and more than freelancers covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Thomson Reuters Foundation is a charity registered in England and Wales registration number: About Thomson Reuters Foundation. About our Women coverage We focus on stories that help to empower women and bring lasting change to gender inequality.
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'Being flattered'
Girls aged between 11 and 13 are increasingly being tricked and coerced into performing sexually over their own webcams, data suggests. The charity took action on 37, self-generated images of children last year. About 30, were of adolescents. Its chief executive said the number of cases was growing at an alarming rate. Susie Hargreaves described the distribution of such images and films, often self-made in domestic settings, as a "national crisis".
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A webcam is a video camera that feeds or streams an image or video in real time to or through a computer network , such as the Internet. Webcams are typically small cameras that sit on a desk, attach to a user's monitor, or are built into the hardware. Webcams can be used during a video chat session involving two or more people, with conversations that include live audio and video. Webcam software enables users to record a video or stream the video on the Internet. As video streaming over the Internet requires much bandwidth , such streams usually use compressed formats.
One day in when my mother picked me up from school, she was carrying a large white envelope. I was in 10th grade and had applied to join the Spirit of America National Honor Band , a group of young musicians from around the country that toured Europe each summer. Inside were several pages of multi-colored paper, but sitting on top was a patriotic-looking letter from the director. A few months later I was getting off a plane in Frankfurt, Germany, one of the youngest of a member group touring with just a handful of adults. We were given just three rules for the trip: Be at dinner together in the hotel each night; Be in our rooms by curfew usually 11pm , and be on the bus in the morning at the time designated. Lucky for me, I was mostly able to avoid trouble. But today, that same amount of freedom, or perhaps even more, is easily accessible to teens or even children without ever leaving their bedrooms.
