Abuse Process including (Cyber) grooming and online sexual solicitation

Abstract

The press repeatedly reports cases where adults ask children for nude photos or meetings via social media. Various repressive and preventative mechanisms are in place to address this. However, the number of unreported cases is high. Despite their supposedly deterrent preventive effect, repres- sive measures, especially penal provisions, do not offer sufficient protection. This raises the addi- tional question of possible preventive measures. However, these are time-consuming regarding human resources if, for example, undercover investigators are being used. For this reason, at- tempts are being made at a technical level to track down punishable chats with sexualised content between adults and children. Although the specific goals and methods are not always identical, there are patterns in the perpetrators’ behaviour which can be grouped by the different phases of the exploitation process. This knowledge can be used to train chatbots to act as a susceptible child to attract potential perpetrators before they exploit real children. Additional safety measures relate to message filtering, to safeguarding the online presence of children as well as to education.