Sharon Cooper began by defining the various forms of sexual abuse of children and young people and provided many examples to illustrate them. According to Ms Cooper, the danger with the sexualisation of children was that they were viewed as desirable sexual partners. This was heightened by the public portrayal of grown up, sexualised women dressed up like children. As well as the sexualisation of protected minors, feelings of guilt and suppression among victims of violence were also key factors contributing to the sexual exploitation of children. The motives of the perpetrators of sexual exploitation included sexual needs and escape from everyday life. Ms Cooper said it was important to be proactive in curbing the sexualisation of children and young people in order to protect minors from sexual exploitation.

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Zoë Hilton gave an overview of the opportunities and risks associated with Web 2.0 and presented measures for dealing with these risks. She explained that current technology made it possible to access the Internet almost anywhere and at any time. In general the Internet offered children countless opportunities, but research was still needed in order to quantify the positive gain for children from the Internet and Web 2.0. In addition, Ms Hilton outlined the risks of using the Internet, explaining that the main risks were contact with strangers, illegal contents and criminal behaviour, the disclosure of personal information as well as the danger of addiction. In order to protect children more effectively, Ms Hilton said it was necessary to raise awareness of the Internet. One way of doing so was to promote media education – both in the private sphere and in schools. Moreover, enhanced technical measures such as filters and blocking, but also independent observation of the compliance with and effectiveness of Internet regulations, aimed to reduce the risks associated with Web 2.0 for children and young people.

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Jörg Ziercke began his speech by presenting various statistics on the sexual abuse of children and on the possession and dissemination of images of child pornography. He underlined the important role played by the Internet in perpetrating this crime. Mr Ziercke stressed that attention needed to be focussed on the high level of sexual exploitation worldwide and the increasing dissemination of images thereof. Preventive and repressive measures were aimed at checking this development. Cooperation with national and international security agencies, which enabled the exchange of extensive information on perpetrators and victims, and the creation of international picture databases were particularly important for solving crimes, in Mr Ziercke’s opinion. He presented several criminal cases and pointed out that the perpetrators and victims on the Internet were getting younger and younger. Mr Ziercke underlined that an important element of fighting the commercial dissemination of child pornography was access blocking. This measure prevented up to 80 percent of users of pornographic contents, the so-called occasional users, from accessing such websites.

Monika Egli-Alge began her presentation with a brief overview of the various definitions of “sexual assault” and some information on offender statistics. She highlighted the fact that the number of young offenders convicted in Switzerland was constant, but the data situation on an international level was still “confusing”. According to Ms Egli-Alge, further research into data collection and the generation of reliable offender profiles was urgently required. Ms Egli-Alge also spoke about the various offender strategies and outlined the causes of early delinquency, which in the majority of cases did not lie in mental illnesses among young delinquents. She said it was important that young people who had become offenders were treated in a manner fitting both the offence committed and the individual personalities, and that the young people were not stigmatised. They had to learn to develop coping strategies and to take responsibility for their lives and role in society. Effective methods of reducing the number of offenders and cases of abuse included appropriate juvenile criminal law, the technical blocking of websites containing child pornography contents and modern treatment programmes for offenders.

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