Editorial

Once again, the risks children face when using the internet is in the news. It is a sad reality that such a powerful and useful tool is employed by paedophiles and perverts to ensnare the young and defenceless besides serving as a medium to peddle and promote their depravity.

Society has already been alerted to the dangers of chat rooms and some four years ago survey findings pointed out that a number of children go on to meet strangers they have been in touch with online. Shockingly enough, this unacceptable situation even occurred with children as young as seven years old.

Children's Commissioner Carmen Zammit recently pointed out that an EU-funded system had been instituted so as to safeguard children at risk from internet abuse. She also revealed that this service for reporting internet abuse had expired a year ago.

During the period that it was operational, about 300 illegal websites were reported, of which 275 carried indecent material involving children. This EU-sponsored service was set up following an appeal for EU funds by the government support agency Appoġġ, with the help of the IT Ministry, in order to fight internet child abuse.

The project functioned between July 2006 and February 2008, after which the European Commission turned down a request to renew it. Unbelievably, the authorities failed to continue this crucial service in the protection of children exposed to such a terrible risk.

Appoġġ explained that people could still call the support line 179 and report cases of internet abuse through the agency's website. The EU-funded service had made possible the employment of staff dedicated to handling such cases. Since its suspension, this facility is now loaded onto a voluntary-run service that has to cope with all sorts of problems besides paedophilia on the internet.

The Children's Commissioner rightly explained that Appoġġ was once again trying to garner EU funds to re-instate this reporting service. She insisted that the government should have stepped in and provided the necessary funding to keep this essential facility in operation.

Public opinion can, of course, only be baffled - that, with such an issue at stake, it has taken a year for such a shortcoming to be highlighted. Indeed, Appoġġ should have raised the matter earlier and appealed to public opinion as soon as this service was discontinued with no indication in sight of it being resumed.

The EU is aware of the growing incidence of internet paedophilia, so much so that, only recently, the European Parliament adopted a report that proposes to make soliciting children for sexual purposes on the internet a criminal offence. It even intends to revise legislation to ensure that paedophile chat rooms are subject to harsh punishments.

But the maxim prevention is better than cure should be the overriding consideration. Sadly enough, the internet has provided the perfect medium for complete strangers to penetrate the sanctuary of the home, empowering depraved and unscrupulous individuals to prey on the young and immature.

It should be a top priority for governments to have an effective user-friendly system in place where such abuse can be reported easily so as to enable the authorities to track down and punish these degenerate culprits.

One hopes that such a service is promptly put in place again and that in the future the Commissioner of Children and other agencies alert public opinion more promptly when such instances emerge.