UK online child grooming cases hit record high amid calls for safety laws

The number of online child grooming crimes recorded by British police hit a record high in 2022, a British children's charity said Tuesday, urging progress on stronger cyber safety laws, reported Xinhua.

Citing data from all British police forces, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) said that 6,350 offences related to sexual communication with a child were recorded last year, an increase of 82 percent from around five years ago.

The NSPCC said almost 34,000 online grooming crimes against children were recorded by British police since the organization first called for social media regulation in 2017.

The charity urged members of parliament and tech companies to back the Online Safety Bill "following new research on the scale of online grooming."

"The number of offences must serve as a reminder of why the Online Safety Bill is so important and why the ground-breaking protections it will give children are desperately needed," Sir Peter Wanless, chief executive of the NSPCC, said.

The bill aims to protect online users by making social media companies more responsible for content published on their platforms. The bill has faced delays since it started in the House of Commons and is now being considered for the final time in the House of Lords.

The charity also said that figures showed over 5,500 offences were against primary school children and 83 percent of online grooming offences were against girls.

Some 150 apps, games and websites were used to groom children online, with 73 percent of the offences occurring on Snapchat or Meta-owned platforms, according to data gathered by the NSPCC through freedom of information requests.

"It's now up to tech firms, including those highlighted by these stark figures today, to make sure their current sites and future services do not put children at unacceptable risk of abuse," Wanless said.

The NSPCC pointed out that the number of online grooming offences and children affected is likely to be a lot higher than what's currently known to the police.