Opinion piece: Unfair to blame children who are victims of sexual crimes

Children subjected to commercial sexual exploitation can be in contact with the support system for years without the abuse being stopped. “We need a complete turnaround in the way we view these children and their rights,” writes Gabriella Kärnekull Wolfe, among others.

It is estimated that more than 20 000 children and young people aged 15 to 19 have been victims of commercial sexual exploitation, which may involve another person paying for a nude photo, a live broadcast or physically meeting the victim to commit paid abuse.

This means that there is the equivalent of one student in every class in grade 9 and high school who has been victimized by this type of crime. And despite the horrific nature of the abuse, which can have lifelong consequences for the child, they rarely have access to care, support or redress in court.

This is one of the conclusions of the report “Everybody looked but nobody saw” released today by the Ombudsman against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in collaboration with Child10, the Ellen Center and the Nova House.

Not asking questions

Our review shows that many, mostly girls, who are victims of commercial sexual exploitation are in contact with the care and support system at some point. However, being in contact with the support system does not mean that the children are identified as victims of violence. This is partly because it is unusual for the care system to ask questions about this type of vulnerability; for example, only one region asks routine questions to identify victims of commercial sexual exploitation. This, combined with the fact that the target group is not included in the national guidelines used by the healthcare system to identify victims of violence, gives healthcare professionals poor conditions for identifying vulnerable children.

At the same time, there are high thresholds for children to dare to tell linked to a concern about how the outside world will react. For a child to dare to tell, they need to feel safe with the person they confide in. Here, healthcare has a long way to go, as three out of four who have been in contact with healthcare state that the care they received was poor or very poor.

Where society identifies vulnerable children, this rarely leads to the child receiving the right protection and support to stop the exploitation. This is mainly due to the fact that the exploitation is seen as a behavioral problem of the child rather than an abuse. Where the child has received some form of compensation from a perpetrator, children report that they are treated as having consented to the exploitation to some extent. Therefore, support is often about trying to get the child to stop their behavior.

This shows a lack of understanding of what commercial sexual exploitation is and how to respond to children who are victims. Being a victim of commercial sexual exploitation means that the child is subjected to paid abuse. However, as there are no recommendations for what interventions the healthcare and social services should implement for the target group, we see great variation and legal uncertainty in the help offered to children. Some children receive treatment for self-harm, while others are placed in special youth homes or receive no help at all.

In order to safeguard the rights of vulnerable children and ensure that more children are identified, we call on the government to take the following measures:

– Instruct the Police Authority to develop methodological support for its outreach work and broaden the outreach work to include more digital platforms. In order to identify more, it is also necessary to task the competent authorities with developing routine questions about commercial sexual exploitation for student health services, social services and child and adolescent psychiatry.

Developing recommendations

– Implement a national awareness raising on commercial sexual exploitation of children involving the professionals who deal with the target group. The awareness raising should include information on the rights of vulnerable children, how to deal with the target group, the causes and consequences of exploitation and the actions needed to prevent and stop exploitation.

– Develop national regulations, general advice and guidelines for the target group. The National Board of Health and Welfare needs to be tasked with developing recommendations on interventions that combine protection with rehabilitation. This could be, for example, open interventions or placement in family homes or HVB homes in combination with trauma treatment.

– Finally, all children up to the age of 18 must have the same criminal law protection against sexual violence. At present, the perpetrator’s liability is reduced once the child reaches the age of 15, which is not in line with the rights of the child. Legislation needs to be changed so that all commercial sexual exploitation of children aged 15-17 is harmonized with sexual crimes against children under 15.

No child chooses

The state must do more to ensure the rights of vulnerable children. Fundamentally, it is about a complete turnaround in the way we view these children and the fact that they themselves bear some form of responsibility for the crimes committed against them.

Commercial sexual exploitation is not something children choose, it is something they are exposed to. This is also the approach that must inform laws, policies and actions aimed at preventing the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

Gabriella Kärnekull Wolfe, Ombudsman against commercial sexual exploitation of children

Madeleine Sundell, children’s rights lawyer

Wanjiku Kaime, Senior Lecturer, Mid Sweden University

Jacob Flärdh, Secretary General Child10

Zandra Kanakaris, Secretary General Ellen Center

Kajsa Rietz, Outreach Manager, Nova House

 

Read the article in Göteborgs Posten here