Online grooming crimes have doubled since 2018, with victims as young as four, charity warns

Online grooming crimes have doubled in the UK since 2017 to a record high, with one victim just four years old, according to the NSPCC. Warning: Readers may find details in this story distressing. The children’s charity said 7,263 offences were recorded by police in the year to March – almost double the 3,728 in the 12 months to March 2018. Its new report, which described the eight-year rise as “deeply alarming”, was based on data from police across the country via freedom of information requests, with Lincolnshire Police the only force failing to provide information. A tech platform was identified in a little more than 2,100 offences, with messaging app Snapchat the most widely used – in around 40% of the cases. The NSPCC said 9% of cases happened on WhatsApp, and 9% on Facebook and Instagram. All those platforms are owned by Meta. While girls made up 80% of victims in cases where the gender was known in the past year, the youngest victim in that period was a four-year-old boy, the charity said. The NSPCC said it wasn’t told how the boy had been groomed, and declined to say which police force recorded this crime for fear
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