Four-year-old boy youngest victim of online grooming, data shows – Care Appointments

A four-year-old boy was among the victims of online grooming, according to data which showed such offences have reached a record high. The NSPCC said the data it had obtained from police forces showing an almost doubling of online grooming crimes in the past eight years was “deeply alarming”. A new offence of sexual communication with a child was introduced in England and Wales in April 2017, to tackle groomers who target under-16s through mobile phones and social media. The offence has been recorded in Northern Ireland since 2015 while a similar offence was introduced in Scotland in 2010. Data obtained by the NSPCC from police forces across the UK showed 7,263 online grooming offences were recorded in the year to March – almost double the 3,728 recorded in the year to March 2018. The NSPCC, which sent freedom of information requests, said it received data from all forces except Lincolnshire. In 2,111 of the recorded offences in the past year a tech platform was identified. Around 40% of those offences took place on messaging app Snapchat while 9% happened on WhatsApp and 9% on Facebook and Instagram, the NSPCC said. While girls made up 80% of victims in cases
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