PESCARA. Alarm remains high in the city over cases of online child pornography. In Pescara, as in the rest of Italy, the phenomenon of so-called “sextortion” is growing, i.e. the method of criminal extortion used to blackmail very young people on the basis of images or videos showing them naked or performing sexual acts. The enticement of children through chat and social media which then leads to exploitation and abuse via the web also remains constant and of a worrying scale. The most critical age group, in this case, is pre-adolescence, from 10 to 13 years old.
The department of the Pescara postal police, led by the manager, is raising attention to the phenomenon Elisabetta Narciso, which on the occasion of the national day against pedophilia and child pornography which occurs today, has released the data of the main and most current cases, accompanied by counteractions and prevention and awareness initiatives aimed at the most vulnerable users. In 2023, a total of 28,355 websites were analyzed by Polpost specialists, of which almost 2,800 were included in the black list of sites containing representations of sexual exploitation of minors. Over 1,100 people identified and reported for downloading, sharing and exchanging photos and videos of sexual abuse against minors. The vice commissioner is the one tracing the contours of the phenomenon in the city Gianluca De Donato, head of the investigative sector of the Abruzzo postal and communications police department. «Pescara is in line with national data», he explains, «because we are talking about phenomena that are deeply rooted in society and which are growing today both in consideration of the greater accessibility to social media by minors, who are sometimes left free to navigate without digital education, both for the greater circulation of child pornography content also through the exchange of stickers in Whatsapp chats which begin to circulate without the awareness of the person sending them and which show rapes of very young children, aged a year or two, especially from countries Asians. We then record the constant data of online solicitations with many children who naively approach the chats and fall victim to the traps.”
There are two most frequent cases: «There is the groomer who is looking for real encounters and those who are interested in involving the minor in the production of child pornography to be distributed online», remarks De Donato. «The plot is the same and the process of acquiring trust is very slow: first they pass themselves off as kids, also using their language, and then they start with requests. At first they ask for a photo of the face, especially of young girls, and then they move on to more explicit things. Sometimes they say they are hackers and have hacked their phones, taking footage in the shower and starting the blackmail: “Send me a photo or I’ll send the hard videos to all your contacts.” The emergence of the phenomenon occurs thanks to a parent, a teacher or another reference adult who reports the situation to us and sets in motion our judicial police work which leads us to identify the cybercriminals.”
