by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Feb 16, 2026 | Child Abuse, Children’s Online World
Grok’s recent frenzied creation and sharing of deepfake pornography through X’s public platform confirmed what activists have known for years. The technology to digitally undress women and children and create e-rape content is easily accessible, largely free, gamified and difficult to police, and neither those responsible for ‘nudifying’ technology or those creating the images think it’s a big deal.
Warning: this article contains disturbing content about sexual violence and child sexual abuse material.
As 2025 ended, social media platform X was suddenly flooded with nonconsensual images of people stripped down to bikinis. It began as a “put her in a bikini” challenge on Grok, the platform’s generative AI tool, and rapidly grew to about three million sexualised images, as many as one created per minute, including about 23,000 of children in various states of undress.
At its zenith, Grok was processing close to 200,000 requests in one day.
As the challenge progressed, and users realised what Grok could and would do when instructed, images shared publicly and available to all X users regardless of their age, showed bikinis becoming progressively more transparent and smaller as requests were issued for them to be made of dental floss or string. Instructions became increasingly sexualised, violent and extreme. Grok was asked to make women bend over to show their genitals, for them to be tied up, gagged, mutilated, covered in blood, bruises, have a forced smile, and for women and children to be drenched in “sticky donut glaze” denoting semen.
To quote one pro-Grok acolyte, “if you post publicly, you are fair game to be e-raped”.
Those victimised through the AI app included Ashley St Clair, erstwhile partner of Elon Musk and mother of one of his children. When she raised the alarm, Grok users fought back, making and posting what she has referred to as “revenge porn”, extreme images of her, including undressing a photo of her as a child and creating an image of her bent over wearing only a dental floss bikini. Disturbingly, her baby son’s backpack is still visible in this image.
The retaliation strategy was also used on British X user Evie who publicly reported xAI for a nonconsensual image of her dressed in a bikini and covered in baby oil. As retribution, multiple images of her were created and posted on X, the worst being one of her mostly naked with a string around her waist, her eyes rolled back and a ball gag in her mouth.
Australian activists Collective Shout, who are campaigning for Grok to be removed from the app stores, were also targeted, their images transformed into humiliating naked or sexualised ones. And an adult survivor of child sexual abuse suffered extreme violence online after she spoke out when Grok users employed the technology to strip a fully clothed photo of her as a three-year-old.
Although Musk maintained that Grok would not create child sexual abuse material (CSAM), the Internet Watch Foundation found “sexualised and topless imagery of girls” on the dark web which users said they had created using Grok. This imagery was reportedly then turned into the worst form of child sexual abuse material (category A: penetrative sexual activity, bestiality or sadism). In its analysis of the images Grok had generated, AI Forensics found that users had requested that minors be put in erotic positions and that sexual fluids be depicted on their bodies. Grok complied with those requests.
IWF expressed concern about the speed and ease at which the images were created. They fear that tools like Grok are “bringing sexual AI imagery of children into the mainstream”.
The sharing of pornography is not against X’s community standards and even before Musk’s acquisition of the company and his update of company policy to allow adult content, about 13% of Twitter content was pornographic in nature. But standards require pornography to be consensual and clearly labelled, a standard these explicitly nonconsensual, easily accessible images failed to meet.
The company also purportedly has zero tolerance for CSAM. On 1 January 2026, an X user asked about its safeguarding failure: “I like X a lot… but, proposing a feature that surfaces people in bikinis without properly preventing it from working on children is wildly irresponsible. This is one of the very first things you’re supposed to check.”
An admin responded: “Thanks for flagging. The team is looking into further tightening our gaurdrails” (sic)
Even Grok acknowledged that it has created and facilitated CSAM: “We appreciate you raising this. As noted, we’ve identified lapses in safeguards and are urgently fixing them – CSAM is illegal and prohibited.”
What both failed to mention is that Musk himself removed the guardrails on Grok’s image and video generator at the end of 2025, citing “free speech” and the need to push back against censorship as his motivation. CNN reported that this was despite senior staffers raising concerns about inappropriate content, and that the upshot was that three senior managers from X’s already tiny safeguarding team resigned shortly thereafter.
According to stats shared in the New York Times, Musk, who openly supported the introduction of “spicy” mode on xAI in August 2025 to drive traffic to the product, and boasted following the Grok furore about how many new users it had generated, also fuelled the bikini trend by posting a photo of himself in a bikini on new year’s day.
Musk’s participation made light of the impact on victims who said they felt horrified and dehumanised by the deepfakes. Collective Shout’s Melinda Tankard Reist agreed that it was a violation, identity theft and humiliating. She said that her “response was visceral”.
Grok’s deepfakes attracted the attention of several governments, including France which was already investigating X for misinformation, hate speech and fraudulent extraction of data, and the UK which used the debacle to fast-track the implementation of legislation passed last year, but inexplicably never implemented, making it illegal to create nonconsensual deepfake pornographic images.
In response to the international backlash, X, which was initially resistant to curtailing Grok’s functionality, issued notification on 15 January (more than two weeks after the challenge began) that making and editing images via Grok to X would now be a paid service rather than one freely available to “add an extra layer of protection”.
It further stated that it would use geoblocking to ensure that X users would no longer be able to edit photos of real people to show them in revealing clothing in jurisdictions where it was illegal.
Most big tech companies wouldn’t be brazen enough to reduce their tactics to writing. But X’s statement confirmed a common practice. Despite having the power to prevent and stop harm, companies don’t prioritise the best interests of users, but instead do the minimum to comply. The troubling implication is that X’s guardrails will only be implemented in countries where creating nonconsensual deepfakes is illegal.
This substantiates burgeoning fears that as developed countries implement more stringent restrictions on Big Tech, and impose significant fines on those who don’t comply, it will not result in companies setting up universal guardrails to protect vulnerable users. Instead, the drive for profit will result in them pulling back from those markets, and directing harmful content and traffic to countries that are not protected by legislation.
While Grok has made nonconsensual deepfake pornography mainstream, “nudifying” apps are not new; a host of others have been freely available since 2019.
In December 2025, Collective Shout conducted a groundbreaking study called “Turning Women and Girls into porn” to determine what a teenage boy with a smartphone and a photo of a (fully clothed) female classmate could do with these apps.
They tested 20 nudifying, deepfake and AI girlfriend apps and discovered that many of the apps are free (although some did have paid functionality which was even more extreme) and there was no age verification. Most nudifying technology only works on women and girl children’s bodies, and not only can it undress them in seconds, but it can also place them in myriad sexual positions including performing anal sex, oral sex, undergoing sexual torture or playing out a sexual fantasy, anything from stepsister to schoolgirl to Disney princess.
Of the 20 websites, only two (which allowed workarounds) prevented the user from creating CSAM, with some generating images of what appear to be prepubescent children.
Galleries contain myriad images, including of seemingly underage girls, bound, blindfolded, being penetrated by multiple men or machines, covered in semen and gang-raped.
Users can copyright and sell images, and some apps allow users to upload them to public forums, compounding the trauma for the victims. Moreover, some apps are gamified with “invite and earn” options where users can unlock additional functionality if they invite their friends to the app. They can also earn money off the purchases of those they’ve invited.
Sites, which typically indemnify themselves by asking users to tick that they will not use the tech for anything illegal, promise to protect the identity of users, just, to quote the report, “not the women and girls they undress”.
The technology is not only easy to access, but also discoverable through search engines. Some are downloadable from the app stores, and others advertised on social media, most notably on Instagram, Telegram and X. These same platforms are being used to share the images once created.
Globally, this technology is resulting in a flood of deepfake CSAM onto pornographic sites. In October 2023, the IWF found that 20,254 AI generated CSAM images had been posted to just one pornography site on the dark web in one month. A year later, the number had increased and the tech had improved, making them almost indistinguishable from in-person abuse. There had also been a 32% increase in the number of images that fell into category A of sexual offences against children, indicating that predators were able to use the technology more effectively to create the most harmful forms of CSAM.
Ease of access means that children themselves are often the initial perpetrators of harm. On 7 February 2026, Emma Sadlier from the Digital Law Company posted that in the past week she had received 18 requests for help from principals, parents and children regarding deepfake pornographic images. She reported that these cases were nearly identical. In all, multiple images were created using numerous girls’ social media photos. Users generated naked images and/or placed girls in sexualised situations mimicking pornography, and these were then shared privately with other users or on public platforms.
Sadlier stressed that if the victim is under 18, this constitutes creation of child pornography (called CSAM elsewhere in the world), because the law doesn’t distinguish between fake or real images, distribution of child pornography, nonconsensual distribution of intimate images, nonconsensual distribution of private sexual images and crimen injuria (harm to the dignity of the child) and may result in civil charges for defamation or damaging the child’s reputation.
She explains that if the child creating and distributing the image is over 14, they have full criminal capacity and can be arrested and imprisoned, 12- and 13-year-olds would be assessed for capacity, and while under-12s do not have criminal capacity, there would still be consequences, including from their schools. Further, children over the age of seven can be sued for harm through civil cases.
According to Marita Rademeyer, a psychologist from Jelly Beanz who works with children exhibiting harmful sexual behaviours, ease of access is resulting in children as young as 10 being referred to her for creating “nudified” images of other children. Rademeyer says that younger children often use the technology because they are curious about bodies or because they think it is a funny prank. Many can’t understand the ramifications of their actions.
Rademeyer describes how bemused a Grade 4 client was when he was suspended from school and only reinstated on condition that he receive counselling. He couldn’t understand why everyone was so upset because, as he said to her, “but Tannie, it wasn’t a real photo”.
At 10, he cannot appreciate the humiliation and sense of violation of his victim, or that girls view nudified images as an act of sexual violence.
He isn’t alone. Even older boys seemingly struggle to appreciate the impact of deepfake porn on victims. But as Rademeyer emphases, the consequences can be devastating. Citing unpublished research which corroborates a 2023 Internet Matters study, she says that for many children a deepfake image could be more traumatic than a real one. The lack of consent increases the harm. She also notes that children have taken our safety messaging seriously. They know that nudes shared publicly can haunt you forever. It makes the loss of control even more violating.
In her April 2025 report, “One day this could happen to me: Children, nudification tools and sexually explicit deepfakes”, UK Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza confirms that now, “girls fear nudification technology in much the same way as they would fear the threat of sexual assault in public places”.
Most link it to misogyny and dominance on the part of the men or boys. One 18-year-old girl explained that in concert with influencers like Andrew Tate and the increasingly violent pornography industry, nudifying apps are being used to force girls into dating and sexual acts. In addition to manipulation, for many it’s used as revenge porn after break-ups or to punish a girl for rejecting a boy.
Even boys subconsciously associate generative AI nudes with hate. Asked if he feared anyone making a nude image of him, a 17-year-old boy responded: “I don’t think anyone hates me enough.”
De Souza, who notes a link between deepfake nudes and depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal ideation, is concerned about how many girls report withdrawing from their online lives because they are terrified of having their images turned into sexual content.
She says that unlike other apps that may be seen to have some benefit, “there is no good reason for tools that create naked images of children. They have no value in a society where we value the safety and sanctity of childhood. Their existence is a scandal.” She then quotes a 16-year-old girl interviewed during her research who asked: “Do you know what the purpose of a deepfake is? Because I don’t see any positives.”
The commissioner’s position, shared by many activists, is that if the creation of CSAM is illegal, the technology used to create the images should also be illegal. And further, that “any individual or organisation motivated by the idea of making profit by creating a tool that supports the exploitation of a child must be held to account.”
Dr Federica Fedorczyk, an expert in AI ethics, agrees. She argues: “The Grok case is only the tip of the iceberg of a wider… ecosystem of online misogyny and abuse. As major tech companies increasingly move towards the creation and dissemination of sexual chatbots – from the announced launch of ‘ChatGPT Erotica’ to Meta’s romantic chatbots that have engaged in sexual conversations with minors – criminalising the outcome alone is no longer enough.”
To remedy the situation, Collective Shout want the UN to support a global ban on all bespoke nudification apps, along with their removal from app stores, and for a global criminalisation of image-based sexual abuse including through deepfakes. Further, the UK Children’s Commissioner has called for the providers of Generative AI and open-source GenAI to face legal consequences if their products are used on children.
Similarly, Fedorczyk is arguing for strict and enforceable limits on material related to child sexual abuse. In the interim, activists are also calling for enforceable age-gating for nudifying apps so they cannot be used by children.
In South Africa, the government is likely to abdicate responsibility, placing the onus on children and families to keep themselves safe. This will require some honest conversations at home and at school, especially with boys of all ages who have access to the internet, about respect, consent and empathy as well as the emotional and legal consequences of deepfake pornography involving their peers, friends and even their female teachers.
Above all, we need men and boys who are prepared to combat misogyny to undo the narrative perpetuated by Musk and others that nudification is harmless fun, a joke, or worse, that a woman or girl’s presence on the internet makes her fair game to violate.
First published in the Daily Maverick on 16th February 2026
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Jun 5, 2025 | Child Abuse, Children’s Online World, Missing and Trafficked Children
The advent of the internet has put predators into children’s pockets, and many use a classic child sexual abuse playbook. With ease of access to children online, anonymity, the speed and intensity at which online relationships progress, secrecy, careful grooming and vicious, prolonged attacks on children’s identity and belonging, the question is not how this crime occurred, but rather how many other children are affected whose stories we will never know?
It’s a parent’s worst nightmare: the phone call warning that the 16-year-old boy who befriended your daughter online, who told her he was en route from the UK to visit her, is an adult man with international warrants out for his arrest. Worse, he was already in the country.
The story reads like the script of a Hollywood movie – a teenage girl rescued minutes before she was sexually abused and trafficked out of the country. It’s a narrative made more shocking because it didn’t happen to a high-risk child from a vulnerable family. The victim was a normal South African teen from a middle-class home with loving and involved parents who had done everything possible to keep her safe.
It isn’t fiction. The advent of the internet has put predators into children’s pockets, and many use an archetypal child sexual abuse playbook. Through ease of access to children online, the anonymity of online contact, the speed and intensity at which online relationships progress combined with secrecy, careful grooming, vicious and prolonged attacks on children’s self-esteem while they are desperate for identity and belonging, and often with the support and financial backing of organised crime, 10 cases of online child sexual abuse and exploitation are reported to occur globally every second.
Multinational investigation
In September 2022, a combined team of homeland security, the Hawks and Interpol, along with anti-trafficking organisation Hope Risen were frantically working behind the scenes to keep UK citizen Adam Qasim Lucas Habib from abducting, raping and trafficking 15-year-old Sam*, the South African girl he had been corresponding with on Omegle, Snapchat and WhatsApp for more than a year, and who he was due to visit within days.
Unbeknown to them though, Habib was already in the country. Always one step ahead, he booked into his hotel two days before the due date on the fake ticket he had sent to her parents. Without luggage, he warned the hotel staff not to disturb him and requested no room service. That night, he allegedly purchased the services of a 13-year-old prostitute, sold to him by her parents.
On the other side of town, Sam, the only one who knew that he had arrived in the country early, began to implement her boyfriend’s carefully constructed plan. For months she had sat with her parents practising drawing a beard and moustache on her face with make-up, covering her hair with a hoodie and expertly transforming herself into a young man. It was done in plain sight of her family, a seemingly innocent pastime to which they imbued no sinister meaning.
Sam had also established a regular habit of going to the gym beneath the luxury apartment block where she lived with her parents and older brother. She’d usually be there for about an hour, more than enough time to meet the boy she was desperately in love with and disappear without a trace.
On that fateful Thursday evening, she planned to meet Habib at the gym. It was the day before Habib’s “mother”, a fake persona he had created to appease Sam’s parents, had told them he was arriving in South Africa.
Read more: Childhood in crisis
When Sam’s mom collected her from school, Sam asked if she would be home by 5pm because that was when she would be going to gym. None the wiser, it would have been an hour and a half before her parents realised she was missing, and by then she would have been long gone.
But at the last minute the plan began to unravel. The catalyst was a chance conversation at an anti-trafficking convention held by South African authorities with their foreign counterparts the week that Habib arrived in the country. During supper on the final night of the conference, a South African agent mentioned that they had a live case in play where the suspect was a UK citizen.
Alert to the potential threat, the UK agent did some digging on his return to the UK. It was he who discovered that Habib was not a child but an adult male in his late twenties, that he had been in juvenile detention in the UK, that he was wanted in both the UK and the US and, most concerningly, that he was already in South Africa.
What followed was a frantic attempt to keep Sam safe, made harder because Sam did not think she was in danger.
At the point at which her parents were notifying her school of a possible kidnap situation, staging an intervention with the senior Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) investigating officer who threatened to arrest Sam for possession of child pornography if she did not hand over her device and passwords, and authorities were putting in plans to arrest Habib, Sam still believed that he was her 16-year-old boyfriend and that they were in love.
Textbook grooming
It was an illusion that Habib had carefully cultivated for more than a year.
Sam was just 14 years old when she first tried Omegle. Like many others her age, her life had been railroaded by Covid, forcing her online and devolving her friendship groups and quest for belonging into the microcosms of online communities.
She’d done the safety talk at school warning that Omegle, the now-defunct (but resurrected in multiple other applications) online video chat site that randomly paired users with other users from across the world was dangerous, attracting predators, and infamous for close-ups of masturbating men and couples having sex on camera. But her friends were all on Omegle and peer pressure and curiosity finally won over caution. Given all the warnings, she felt like she had hit the jackpot when Omegle paired her with Adam Habib, a handsome 16-year-old boy from the UK.
Nevertheless, she felt uncomfortable on the site and begged him to move across to Snapchat instead. When he was finally persuaded, the price he extracted was for her to stick out her tongue on camera. Innocent as she was, she had no idea that he had a tongue fetish or that after his camera suddenly went dark, the sound she could hear was him masturbating.
Little is known about the first six months of their relationship but it seems that he was initially very attentive and romantic. He used affirmation and gifts to break down her barriers, including the airtime that enabled her to speak to him late at night, concealing her activities by placing a bathroom towel at the threshold of her door to block the light, and listening closely to the footsteps down the hall. As her parents attest, she became an expert at hiding her secret online habit and at identifying which parent was coming down the passage while she was speaking to Habib.
Read more: Survival stories – readers share their experiences of child abuse
But slowly the relationship began to deteriorate. Using a textbook grooming playbook, Habib moved from meeting an important need in Sam’s life, and flooding her with gifts and compliments, to control, isolation and abuse. He alienated her from her family, keeping her up until all hours so she was perpetually exhausted, tearful and not coping at school. He gained access to all of her social media accounts and passwords to keep track of her relationships and movements, and began grooming her friends.
Then, after he had extracted a promise that she “would never speak to other boys”, he hacked one of her male friend’s accounts. When she innocently messaged the friend, Habib revealed that it was him using the account and accused her of cheating.
He began punishing her. The conversations became more and more abusive. Gone were the romantic words. Instead he bullied and body-shamed her, mocking her body and face and calling her a slut, a whore and “only good for the streets”, gradually chipping away at her self-esteem.
Months later when her anxious father hacked her Snapchat account he came across a tirade of misogynistic abuse. When he asked Sam why she allowed Habib to speak to her like that, she said that she deserved it because of her unfaithfulness.
At the same time, the exchanges became more and more sexual. Habib explained in explicit detail what he would like to do with her when they finally met, sent her pornographic images and made her masturbate and perform oral sex and anal sex on herself using a hairbrush while he watched and masturbated.
His conversations with this 14-year-old-child, which included references to oral and anal sex, orgasms, his tongue fetish, tying her up, raping her like “a bad little slut” and taking her virginity whether she consented or not, were so graphic and so vulgar that his advocate refused to read them into record during the trial.
He also manipulated her into sexting and sending him nudes. It was at this point that Sam finally confessed to her mother that she had “done something” and that she was worried.
‘I met a boy’
Sam’s parents, Rob and Linda*, had been concerned about Sam’s behaviour for months, as she had become more withdrawn, anxious and angry. Arguments with her mom, who had previously been her confidant, had increased, and she was tearful and exhausted. But, they had attributed her changed behaviour to her being a teen, so her confession took Linda by surprise.
Trying to remain calm, Linda asked her what she had done and how bad she thought it was. She ascertained that Sam had met “a boy” online and sent him naked pics of her torso. Sam said that they were in love but also that he was being nasty and had made her cry.
When Sam’s parents asked her why she accepted the belittling, she told them that “relationships online are different”. They tried to prove it wasn’t normal, but she’d push them out of her room when she was talking to Habib, and wouldn’t let them speak to him. Nevertheless, she’d often end conversations in tears and then regret her transparency.
When Habib chatted to Sam live he used an emoji filter to mask his identity so Rob and Linda were increasingly convinced that he was a “catfish”. Worried that he may be a jihadist or an extortionist, Rob began digging, but could find nothing on him.
Then in Easter 2022, when the family planned a trip away, Sam insisted she wouldn’t go. At the last minute, one of Sam’s friends tipped off Rob and Linda that Habib was in the country and Sam was planning to travel to meet him at his hotel while they were away. Horrified, Rob drove her to Montecasino to find him. When his accommodation details proved to be false, they took it as proof that he didn’t exist and that their nightmare was over.
Their euphoria was short-lived though. Hours later he sent Sam a picture of himself standing next to the Easter Bunny at the Pick n Pay downstairs from their apartment.
Suddenly, he was not only real but a stone’s throw away from their daughter. Defying the advice of a top social media attorney to “lock her up for six months and take away her phone”, and in a bid to not lose Sam, the family staked him out and then let Habib and Sam meet in public places under supervision.
It was clear almost immediately that something wasn’t right. On two occasions when Habib (who concealed his age) was with Sam, older patrons flagged his behaviour, confronting him about the way he spoke to her and his unwillingness to accept her turning down his advances.
Frustrated at not being alone with Sam, Habib extended his trip, explaining that his family was waiting for him in Cape Town. Before he left, he begged Sam’s mom to let the two of them spend time on their own. It was a request Sam’s parents adamantly refused.
In the months that followed, Habib redoubled his efforts to meet Sam alone. He even created a mother persona who did her best to persuade Rob and Linda that the children were in love and that they would be bad parents if they stood in the way. Habib’s “mother” had a 30-minute video call with Rob and Linda, begging them to allow Habib to visit again. They finally agreed to let him come in September 2022.
Read more: Gaps in the safety net — breaking down state and societal protections for children
It was here that Habib’s plan went wrong. His “mother” inadvertently disclosed to Linda that she had never been to Cape Town, undermining his story that his parents had been with him in South Africa. “She” further agreed to send through a copy of his passport.
Although the date of birth and ID number were blanked out, the barcode was still visible, which was how authorities were finally able to uncover his age, record and movements. The family were also given the contact details of Tabitha Lage from Hope Risen.
Lage described how during her first meeting with Sam, the two of them sat in silence for a whole hour as Sam angrily refused to speak to her. But then the floodgates opened.
At Lage’s behest, Sam persuaded Habib to move their conversation to WhatsApp which allowed the family to capture evidence (the final three months of their relationship alone produced 2,596 pages of WhatsApps). This had been impossible on Snapchat because of the disappearing messages, and because Habib received notifications when their messages were screenshotted, sending him into an apoplectic rage.
No remorse
By the time September and the planned second visit arrived, Sam was exhausted from sleepless nights, overwrought from the ongoing barrage of vitriol and abuse, failing at school, and worn down, with her self-esteem in tatters. She would later confess that she felt like it was too late to turn back.
Everything was poised for what could have been the day she was trafficked. But then came the police breakthrough, the confiscation of her phone and the intervention that had her in a conference room with the FCS unit of the police, rather than at the gym ready to meet Habib.
Instead of feeling grateful though, Sam was devastated. The following day, as she sat with her relieved parents in a restaurant downstairs from their apartment watching the Springboks play rugby, she became more and more anxious until at half-time Rob decided they should leave.
Minutes later, his phone began to ping as the restaurant manager, who knew the family well, and who had been given Habib’s picture, alerted him that Habib was metres away from their apartment, retracing his steps from the March visit in a frenzied attempt to find Sam.
Although he came terrifyingly close to tracking her down, it proved to be his undoing.
Even after his arrest, he still had a hold over Sam. Managing to contact her while in prison, he threatened to punish Lage and Sam’s parents. She was so certain that he would harm them that she begged him to rather kill her than hurt them.
At trial, he showed no remorse or recognition that he had done anything wrong.
Finally, more than two years after his arrest, Adam Qasim Lucas Habib was found guilty of human trafficking, production and possession of child pornography, grooming, compelled self-sexual assault, compelling a child to witness sexual offences, flashing and sexual assault. On 4 March 2025, he was sentenced to an effective 40 years in prison. Having already served three, he is facing another 13 years of incarceration.
The Johannesburg High Court judgment was landmark because it reinforced that the Trafficking in Persons (TiP) Act doesn’t require children to be moved in order for them to be trafficked.
Judge Coertse provided a thorough breakdown of the Act, showing that if any of the following criteria were fulfilled, it would constitute trafficking: “any person who delivers, recruits, transports, transfers, harbours, sells, exchanges, leases or receives another person.”
He agreed that the prosecutor had proven that Sam was recruited for sexual exploitation. The judge further explained that Habib had used an “abuse of vulnerability” to recruit her, leading her to believe that she had no other option than to submit to exploitation.
But despite the victory in court, Sam, just months away from becoming an adult, has been significantly scarred by her experience. Captain Botha from the FCS unit testified at Habib’s trial that Sam had suffered from child sexual abuse syndrome, presenting with the five classic signs of secrecy, helplessness, entrapment and accommodation, delayed, conflicting and unconvincing disclosure, and retraction.
Habib’s grooming, which isolated her, met a felt need, created a shared secret, sexualised their relationship and then wore her down through cruelty and control, had altered her self-perception, evident in the way she continued to love and support him despite what he had done – according to Lage, a form of Stockholm syndrome.
Educating children
While Sam’s experience is unique, it is not uncommon. According to Childlight, more than 300 million children are victims of online child sexual abuse and exploitation every year.
Prevention requires tech companies to place children’s wellbeing over profit and for governments to use legislation to prohibit or at least delay children from accessing harmful platforms including social media and gaming platforms where predators can access them. For worried parents, the changes are coming too slowly.
In response, many are delaying access to devices, something Sam endorses for her future children.
In addition, educating children about grooming and online exploitation, and keeping open lines of communication wherever possible, are key to safety because even when authorities and families successfully collaborate to protect a child, there are no fairytale endings in child sexual abuse cases. For Sam and her family, healing and recovery may be a long and painful journey.
One in eight children has been affected by online solicitation. If you or a family member have been affected by online child sexual abuse and exploitation, contact Childline for assistance on 116.
If you want to report an electronic crime, contact Crime Stop on 086 000 10111 and ask to speak to the Serial Electronic Crime (SECI) Unit.
Concerned parents who want to delay access to smart devices can join the Smartphone Free Childhood movement. For more information about how this crime affects South African children and the legislative reforms needed to keep our children safer, read “Government initiatives to protect children from online harms may be too little, too late”.
First published in the Daily Maverick: 05.06.2025
*Names changed to protect their identities
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Feb 19, 2025 | Child Abuse, Children’s Online World
Up to 60% of South African children have seen pornography by age 10; 20% of children have been subjected to sexual abuse and exploitation online; and harmful sexual behaviours among children, including rape and incest, are at crisis levels.
It’s been two years since South Africa participated in the global Disrupting Harm survey which identified the prevalence and impact of online child sexual abuse and exploitation (OCSEA) in the country, and a year since Daily Maverick sounded the alarm about children’s early and prolonged exposure to pornography and other harms children experience online.
They are harms that government appears to be taking seriously. In 2024, when it was a participant in the first global conference on ending violence against children and signatory to the resultant Bogota Call to Action – a global commitment to protecting children from violence – South Africa’s pledge included online safety.
Also in 2024, four regulatory entities launched the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and Media Regulators Forum, designed to protect children and vulnerable groups in digital spaces; the Film and Publications Board launched a WhatsApp hotline.
Moreover, online safety was included as a theme of the 2024 “16 Days of Activism for no violence against women and children”.
But even a cursory comparison of South Africa’s commitment to those of other Bogota signatories, and an evaluation of government’s presentation to the Parliamentary Committee on social development about what it has done to prevent and mitigate online harm, raises alarm bells.
Government’s strategy, which ignores the harm of children’s exposure to pornography and includes no mention of legislative or policy reforms, but instead focuses on education and awareness raising, is a long-game approach, akin to going door-to-door to warn people of an approaching hurricane.
It might be apposite if we weren’t already in the middle of the storm.
Problematic or harmful sexual behaviours
The reports came with depressing regularity over 2024. Concerned schools, ranging from elite private schools to quintile 1 and 2 government schools, sought help with problematic or harmful sexual behaviours often enacted in public spaces, at school, on camps and tours, and after hours between pupils.
Girls caught naked and kissing each other in school bathrooms; boys and girls masturbating in public spaces, either alone or in a group; boys experimenting together sexually on school camps, including a group of boys using bottles for anal penetration; reports of groping and fingering; sexual grooming of peers; and even full sexual assault, often in public places.
While some may argue that such behaviours aren’t uncommon among teens, these reports aren’t coming from high schools. Instead, every one of these incidents involved children aged between six and 11, neither legally able to consent to sex nor to be charged with a crime because they’re under the age of criminal capacity.
In one of the most concerning stories, John* a nine-year-old boy, sexually assaulted Ella*, an 11-year-old girl. The boy was bewildered about her reluctance to participate.
In another, a boy was seen sexually assaulting preschool girls on the side of the road.
The reports aren’t isolated. Experts are concerned that harmful sexual behaviours, defined as child-on-child sexual abuse or inappropriate sexual behaviours, are at epidemic levels among children.
In the United Kingdom, 50% of sexual assaults of children reported to the police have been committed by other children. South Africa lacks these disaggregated sexual assault statistics.
But, a recent study on harmful sexual behaviour (HSB) among South African children conducted by Jelly Beanz, an organisation dedicated to helping children impacted by trauma and abuse, found that in 2016, in almost a third of South African sexual abuse cases involving children, the perpetrator was another child. If South Africa is following international trends, that percentage has increased in the last eight years.
Exposure to online pornography
The HSB cases all have a common denominator – at least one of the involved children had been exposed to online pornography prior to the incident. In its book, South African Children and Pornography, designed to help practitioners manage the pornography crisis, Jelly Beanz explain that young children are particularly affected by viewing pornography and feel compelled to either co-watch with other children or to act out what they have seen. The consequences can be tragic.
In a well-publicised story published in the Sowetan in October 2024, a boy was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment after he began raping other children at age 12. His rapes included that of a 12-year-old classmate, an 11-year-old boy, a five-year-old girl and the attempted rape of an 11-year-old girl. Along with a violent family life, the boy confessed to watching pornography on his phone and then “putting what he saw into practice”.
For Edith Kriel, Managing Director of Jelly Beanz, the case epitomises an adult problem for which children are paying. Kriel lamented the institutional failure that resulted in this child not getting the help he needed to stop harming others. Social workers had an opportunity to intervene after the first rape, but misunderstood the legislated age of criminal capacity and failed to ask the right questions about how his online world was driving his behaviour.
At nine, John* had already been viewing pornography for several years. When asked about it, his heartbroken mother said that she had been aware of his pornography usage, but thought he had stopped watching.
As much victims as actors
The Harmful Sexual Behaviours study emphasises that children who commit these crimes when under 12, the age of criminal capacity, are “children at risk” and in many cases, “sad children not bad children”. Those whose behaviour originates in pornography viewing are as much victims as they are actors.
But this does not mitigate harm, and children may still end up in diversion programmes, if these are even available, and labelled a pervert or paedophile by their peers.
In at least one case, a 10-year-old boy was forced to leave his school because of bullying and name-calling from other boys and their parents after a shared and mutually initiated sexual experiment with three of his peers on a school camp.
The South African government urgently needs to acknowledge the link between pornography viewing and HSB drawn by multiple academic studies and the United Kingdom Children’s Commissioner, and act to protect children from exposure to pornography as part of its strategy to shield children from online harms. It’s critical because if South African statistics are accurate, and up to 60% of children are exposed to pornography by age 10, these incidents will not decrease without active government intervention.
Nor is HSB the only negative outcome of children viewing pornography. It is also linked to early sexual debuts in children, willingness to take more risks sexually, including anal sex, facial ejaculations, strangulation, unprotected sex and sexual violence.
A 2010 study which analysed the most watched pornography scenes found that 88% of them contained physical violence – 94% of this violence was directed towards women and in 96% of the scenes, the women portrayed pleasure when aggressed against.
In a country with such high levels of violence against women and children and such concerning rates of child pregnancies, including among children aged 10-14, policymakers cannot ignore the impact of pornography viewing.
Online exploitation
Further, exposure to pornography has been identified by frontline workers as the most significant risk factor in making children vulnerable to online child sexual abuse and exploitation (Ocsea).
In 2024, more than 100 million images or videos of children being sexually abused were found online, 98% of these show children under 13, and in January 2025, South African police arrested Darren Wilken for the possession and distribution of more than 10 million child sexual abuse images and videos. Yet, pornography viewing is not included in the government’s definition of online harm.
The online harms that government does acknowledge, including online grooming, sexting and sextortion, are equally prevalent in South Africa. A global 2024 study done by the University of Edinburgh and the Human Dignity Foundation for Childlight found that more than 300 million, or one in eight children worldwide, had been subject to online solicitation in the past 12 months. This includes unwanted sexual talk such as non-consensual sexting, unwanted sexual questions, non-consensual taking, sharing and/or exposure to sexual images and videos, and requests for unwanted sexual acts by adults or other youths.
Of the regions surveyed, southern and East Africa had the highest measured rates of online solicitation of children in the past 12 months (which they defined as online grooming, online sexual harassment, pressure to obtain images, voluntarily provided images in a statutorily impermissible relationship, unwanted/non-consensual/pressured sexting, and unwanted sexual talk). The studies they cited showed that 20.4%, or one in five children in the region had been targeted over the previous 12 months.
This study mirrored the findings of the South African version of the Disrupting Harm study which indicated that in the year prior to the survey, 19% of the 9-17-year-olds surveyed were asked “to talk about sex or sexual acts with someone when they did not want to”; 22% had been asked to share sexual information about themselves; 16% said they had been asked to share a naked photo or video of themselves; and 7% had been extorted using naked photos or images (the latter two figures are likely to be higher because these crimes are frequently underreported).
Nor are online harms exclusively related to pornography or Ocsea. In 2024, Dr Jonathan Haidt’s book, the Anxious Generation detailed the rise of phone-based children, the loss of a play-based childhood, and how it’s affecting children.
Haidt, along with other experts in this space such as Dr Jean Twenge, Dr Becky Foljambe and Professor Gloria Mark highlight in stark detail how our children’s online world has resulted in a myriad of harms ranging through depression, loneliness, self-harm and suicide, high-risk behaviours, changes to sleep, relationships and academic performance, and compulsivity – all of which are impacting on children’s working memory, ability to concentrate, emotional regulation, judgement, impulsivity, cognitive skills and ability to learn.
SA’s high-risk environment
While these are global challenges, South Africa is a particularly high-risk environment because of the saturation of children with internet-enabled devices; the absence of care for many; the lack of tech-savvy caregivers who recognise that children are no longer safe “in their own rooms” and who have actively put protective mechanisms in place; the deficiency of budget for policing and prosecution of online crimes; and the dearth of legislation and policy to protect children online.
In response to these crises, government has focused on awareness and education. In December 2024, the Department of Social Development reported to the parliamentary portfolio committee that since the country became a member of the WeProtect Global Alliance in July 2020, government has trained almost 1,000 practitioners on online safety and run several workshops for children, caregivers and educators.
The South African government’s commitment to continue with this strategy is confirmed in its Bogota pledge which states that the country will “build capacity of different stakeholders on online safety including parents, caregivers, children, frontline workers, and strengthen the curriculum in schools promoting the online safety of children by 2027”.
Awareness-raising and education are mission critical for dealing with online harms, and a key action step highlighted in the evidence-based action report arising from the global Disrupting Harm study. But, as veteran child protection activist Joan van Niekerk points out, “in the absence of any reported monitoring and evaluation, it’s impossible to say how many of South Africa’s 21 million children have been reached through each trained practitioner.”
Problematic strategy
The strategy is problematic for other reasons too.
First, it is a painstakingly slow approach to a clear and present danger. Not only is the risk to children of delayed interventions immense, but the department doesn’t have the resources to provide restorative justice and support services for the number of children already exhibiting harmful sexual behaviours.
Equally, South Africa has neither the capacity in policing services nor the justice system to be able to assist children groomed and targeted online, often after being exposed to pornography.
Second, an education and awareness approach inadvertently places the burden of responsibility on children to keep themselves safe. Not only is this a devolution and avoidance of the state’s duty of care for vulnerable children, but it places children in an impossible situation.
The Disrupting Harm survey consistently found that children were aware of risks online and professed that they wouldn’t take them, but still did. For example, more than 50% of children said that it was very risky to talk to someone on the internet that they hadn’t met before, but equally, more than 50% reported that they had done so; 32% had shared their personal details including full name, address or phone number despite knowing that this could result in harm.
Kriel illustrates using the story of a 7-year-old who was exposed to pornography after he searched for the words “bum” and “boys peeing”, despite having signed a contract agreeing not to search for anything inappropriate on the school iPads. In response, the school blamed this Grade 1 for “breaking his promise”, thus deferring its fundamental responsibility to protect children when they access school tech.
As experts attest, children’s brains are still developing through childhood, and they cannot always predict the consequences of their actions. Equally, as studies are confirming, children who have been shielded from risk “in the real world” are often far more compelled to take risks online.
But most importantly, we are pitting children against the pornography industry that in 2023 was worth $1.1-billion in America alone; against programmed backdoors and sophisticated algorithms designed to trap children into viewing pornography; against big tech’s lack of accountability for allowing children’s natural curiosity about sex and sexuality to result in them being exposed to all genres of pornography, including rape and snuff pornography; against sexual predators; and against criminal syndicates preying on children’s need for belonging and identity and so effective that in one study, two-thirds of the 6,000 Gen Z youth and young adults surveyed across six countries had been sextorted.
State responsibility
It isn’t a fair fight, and we cannot make it children’s responsibility to stay safe. For this reason, pledges from other countries place the onus on the state to protect children.
For example, the United Kingdom’s commitment is to “international leadership to prevent child sexual exploitation and abuse in all its forms, including online child sexual abuse, through the implementation of legislation and the sharing of knowledge and insight with key partners across the world. This includes responding to the increasing threat of AI-generated child sexual abuse and exploitation and supporting innovative work from across the tech sector to use AI to detect and prevent this harm”.
Zimbabwe’s pledge includes legislation designed to protect children in the online space.
It is also the reason why Australia’s recently enacted ban on social media for children under 16 has no penalties for children or caregivers if they contravene the restrictions, but places the burden of responsibility squarely on technology companies to ensure that they do not permit underage use.
Failure to comply – as with the EU regulations, and the UK’s Online Safety Act which will be enacted in 2025 and is designed to protect children from exposure to pornography, self-harm and violent content – will result in huge financial penalties for the companies who transgress. In the case of the UK, that is up to 10% of their global revenue.
But perhaps the biggest problem with government’s approach is that, as with its other strategies to stop child violence, it represents a failure to use the power afforded to it to make systemic and societal change.
Suggested actions
The suggested action items from the Disrupting Harm study include governments investing in child protection services, budgeting for law reform and policy development, and financially capacitating first responders such as increasing the number and expertise of practitioners, dedicated police services including in cybercrimes, and child-friendly justice.
Further, it recommends using legislation amendments, new legislation and policy to address Ocsea and exposure to pornography.
Frustratingly, the South African Law Reform Commission has already done the work to draft the necessary legislation. As highlighted by Daily Maverick in December 2023, recommendations to protect children from exposure to pornography and other harms online have been gathering dust for the past three years.
No one in government has stated publicly why the legislation has never been actioned. But, if the minister of social development and the new minister of justice are committed to online safety for children, introducing the legislation to Parliament would be the most effective way to achieve this.
In a country with a myriad of child protection challenges and profound levels of exposure to violence, keeping children safer online could significantly minimise their risk of harm.
Surely it should be everyone’s goal? But achieving it requires government to add to its current education and awareness strategy, to enact the drafted legislation most likely to protect children, and ultimately, to capacitate the child protection system.
Does it have the motivation and political will to do so? Only time will tell.
First published in the Daily Maverick: 19.02.2025
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Aug 5, 2024 | Child Abuse, Child Protection Legislation & Child Rights, Children’s Online World
The labelling, identification with a maligned gender and the influence of and schooling in violence, misogyny and sex, both on and offline, could be fuelling what we fear most – the rise of another generation of violent men.
A recent headline in the New York Times read, “Boys get everything except the thing that’s most worth having.” Author Ruth Whippman, referring to boys, writes that “modern childhood presents a perfect storm for loneliness…”.
Whippman describes the dilemma boys face. They continue to have their feelings, vulnerabilities and even victimhood negated because of patriarchy where “all the old deficiencies and blind spots of male socialisation are still in circulation – the same failure to teach boys relational skills and emotional intelligence, the same rigid masculinity norms and social prohibitions that push them away from intimacy and emotionality.”
And they’ve grown up under the shadow of “toxic masculinity” where those on the opposite end of the spectrum think that boys have had too much attention in the past.
“For every right-wing tough guy urging his crying son to ‘man up’,” Whippman writes, “there is a voice from the left telling him that to express his concerns is to take airtime away from a woman or someone more marginalised… In many cases, the same people who are urging men and boys to become more emotionally expressive are also taking a moral stand against hearing how they actually feel. For many boys, it can seem as though their emotions get dismissed by both sides.”
According to Whippman, #metoo “should have been an opportunity to challenge patriarchy and the old power structures along with the old pressures and norms of manhood and helped boys to be more emotionally open and engaged. But instead, it has had the opposite effect, shutting them down even further.”
This challenge is even more acute in South Africa where major studies have revealed that boys are revered for their future role as protector and provider, yet unsupervised, unprotected and vilified for their current or perceived future wrongdoing.
They are frequently unfathered, schooled about sexuality by peers and pornography, four times as likely to commit suicide as girls, and given to urges deemed beyond their control.
Sexual violence
For many, childhood is characterised by violence, and although they were as likely to be subject to sexual assault as girls, its impact is trivialised and weaponised against them.
One of these reports, from a 2023 study on boyhood by global advocacy group Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice, focuses on navigating boyhood in sub-Saharan Africa, specifically for 8-13 year olds. It was released on 16 April 2024, Blue Umbrella Day, an initiative driven by Family for Every Child, which is dedicated to caring for boys affected by sexual violence.
The Equimundo report formed the basis of discussions by experts at its launch along with two other reports, a 2018 global report on caring for boys affected by sexual violence compiled by Family for Every Child, and another 2021 report on the same topic researched by the Child in Distress Network (CINDI) and Childline which focuses specifically on South African boys.
Together, the picture they painted of the state of boyhood and the plight of boys affected by sexual violence was a particularly bleak one.
During the conference, experts began by answering the question, “why focus on boys”, explaining that the emphasis on boy children should never be to the exclusion of girls and the difficulties girl children continue to face. However, they stressed, boy children have a specific set of challenges that often go unacknowledged by families, communities, schools and policymakers, and therefore go unmanaged.
Most significantly, the studies show that patriarchy disadvantages boy children as much as girl children and women, but in a different way.
Equimundo’s Gary Barker, speaking about reframing masculinity, explained that surveys conducted by the organisations found that 40-50% of men believed that real men outperform others at all costs, shouldn’t ask for help or show that they are vulnerable, see sex as conquest rather than intimacy or connection, have to show that they are tough, and see violence as an acceptable way to get what you want.
He explained that those subscribing to these norms were multiple times more likely to binge drink, to have considered suicide, to bully, to be depressed, to have traffic accidents and to sexually harass a woman.
By contrast, the studies showed a chasm between how boys were viewed and therefore raised, and how they viewed themselves. When asked to describe themselves, boys used words like kind, helpful, nice, courteous, hardworking, and courageous.
This differed vastly from how they were described by their communities who used words like wrongdoers, troublemakers, drunkards, and drug abusers.
Suzanne Clulow, who was involved with all three research studies, explained how one of the girls she interviewed even described boys as being “like dogs”: “They say that boys are dogs, they are not loved, you will see them getting blamed in most cases for rape, transmitting diseases and they say all this is done by men.”
The studies, which included content from practitioners, families and, in the case of the South African study, children themselves, show how the social scripts which dictate what is acceptable behaviour for boys conflate financial provision with masculinity. This pressure to provide, especially in an economic climate where jobs are scarce, has led even young boys to feel hopeless.
Further, the belief that boys must be independent means that they are sent outside of home earlier, and are less supervised and less cared for than girls. Interviews with caregivers revealed a belief that boys could defend themselves and didn’t want to express their emotions or be nurtured and protected.
Rejection, lack of love
While parents and girl children perceive this lack of supervision as freedom, independence and responsibility, boys view it as rejection and a lack of love.
Boys repeatedly referred to being unwanted and “pushed out of home” earlier. To quote one of the boys, “parents only want girls”. Another reported envying girls for their emotional connection with parents. Many boys expressed how lonely this lack of relationship left them feeling.
Troublingly, stereotypes are even stronger and more policed in boys’ peer groups. Many boys reported fearing being excluded from the group (especially those boys who were perceived as less manly, softer, thinner, smaller or more effeminate).
But despite this, boys did not perceive their peer groups to be a safe space, instead characterising them as a place of competition, banter that can easily morph into bullying, and aggression. This was confirmed by boys studied by Whippman who described even long-term friendship groups as “unsupportive” and reported that they did not feel comfortable being emotionally open or vulnerable in front of them.
Whippman found that almost without exception boys, “craved closer, more emotionally open relationships, but had neither the skills nor the social permission to change the story.”
Barker confirms that little boys come into the world ready to be loved and to learn how to love others, but their need for nurturing and attachment can easily be crushed. Along with their lack of skill to form connections, this leads to many boys feeling lonely and that “no one really knows me”, which in turn results in boys closing off their emotions and the human connections they want most, and instead professing that they don’t care.
In the book Raising Cain, Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson describe how boys are taught that they mustn’t be feminine. The result is that they attack the “feminine” side of themselves: compassion, nurturing, caring and emotional connection.
Mothers, especially those whose male partners are absent, are often more openly critical of men. Boys grow up with the dichotomy of seeking to be loved by women who are overtly negative about masculinity. While women often de-individualise boys and men when they malign them and label them “trash”, their own sons are unable to separate themselves from the evils of the group.
Unresolved trauma, unsupportive schools
The early lack of supervision and connection has another unintended consequence, creating the propensity towards violence. Experts at the Blue Umbrella event noted that unresolved trauma can promote and lead to violence, and that the biggest risk factor for violence perpetration is experiencing or witnessing violence. Early independence in boys means that they are far more likely to witness violence at a young age.
Many boys also experience school as an unsafe and unsupportive place. Global studies highlight boys’ educational underachievement. In a World Bank study of 100 countries, boys consistently fell behind girls on literacy, numeracy and standardised tests. Boys particularly struggled with primary school because of the gendered nature of teaching.
Although corporal punishment is banned in South African schools, the South African study revealed that boys were routinely subjected to harsh punishments, bullying, and physical and sexual violence from peers and teachers. Schools are not welcoming for boys, so they disengage from school. Boys also externalise trauma which can result in negative behaviours, including greater truancy or drop-out rates.
The upshot was that schools, like many homes, weren’t able to provide a place of meaningful connection for boys.
Life online, pornography
With home, peers and school often proving fraught, boys are increasingly finding their safe space online. Half of the boys polled in a study done in the US said that their online world was more interesting than their offline world.
And while there are positives about being online, and for many boys it is an important source of connection, what they are increasingly finding there are sexist, misogynist, angry and racist influencers – who they nonetheless trust – violent gaming, bullying and trash talk.
Boys are also reporting that online is where they are learning about sex and sexuality through exposure to pornography. The CINDI study confirmed that in South Africa many boys were learning about sex through pornography viewing, which typically normalises violence, harmful and risky sexual behaviours and minimises the need for consent. Boys who participated in the research reported that for many, it was their first exposure to sex, and they were aware of how it was changing their perceptions and feelings.
According to reports completed by Sonke Gender Justice in 2018 and 2021 on the “State of South Africa’s fathers”, 64% of households do not have a biological father present. The CINDI study further found that many mothers did not believe that they were equipped to teach their sons about sex and sexuality because of gender norms, and because, in many cases, they were unschooled about sexuality themselves.
Another violent generation
Tragically, the lack of supervision, communication, direction, affection and connection, the labelling, identification with a maligned gender and the influence and schooling in violence, misogyny and sex both on and offline could therefore be fuelling what we fear most – the rise of another generation of violent men.
Equally though, the perception that boys are violent and the instigators of violence also stops them from being acknowledged as victims. Although the Optimus study found that boys are slightly more likely to be sexually abused than girls (36.8% for boys and 33.9% for girls), the reports note that the sexual abuse of boys is “massively denied, misunderstood and even trivialised”.
Boys are under-represented as victims of sexual violence and disincentivised from reporting abuse. Many don’t disclose because of the shame of being seen as “less male”, fear of being labelled weak or homosexual (especially in countries where homosexuality is still illegal) or told that they should have fought back or run away. Some express confusion about how to get help, others guilt, especially if they were groomed by their perpetrator.
Boys who report sexual abuse also risk being blamed, and even seen as the aggressor (especially if the perpetrator is female). Families, communities and even abuse support services, child protection services and the courts, which are tailored towards girls, do not believe that boys can be victims. Some boys report being turned away from support services if they do disclose.
Exclusion and bias
The experience of young male victims reflects misperceptions about boys that extend as far as treaty bodies tasked with keeping children safe. Veteran child protection activist Dr Joan van Niekerk reported at the Blue Umbrella Day launch that even the World Health Organization policy on reducing domestic violence excludes boys.
When activists criticised the draft policy endorsed globally by health ministers and entitled “prevention of violence against women and girls” because it ignored boy children, the WHO’s response was to change the name to “prevention of violence against women and girls and children.”
This bias is carried through into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals which focus on “achieving gender equality for all and empowering women and girls”. While the goal is essential, Van Niekerk stresses that empowering boys is equally important to prevent boys from feeling the need to establish power through violence.
This bias against boys is also evident in South African policy. There are few boy-focused initiatives that address the challenges that boys face. Instead, programmes focused on boys tend to be about toxic masculinity. Boys are poorly understood and supported in the child protection system and courts, and although restorative justice and diversion programmes for child offenders are an underpinning principle of the Child Justice Act, girls are far more likely to be supported through these programmes than boys.
Equally, the bias has led to a lack of donor funding for programmes assisting boys, including boy victims of violence. This is despite boys being statistically more likely to experience both physical and sexual violence than girls.
Meaningful interventions
While the picture of boyhood painted by the experts is not positive, they stressed that interventions are possible at every level of society which could make a meaningful impact on boys.
Speakers emphasised that while many boys grew up without a father in their household, that did not mean that they lacked access to male role models – 80% of boys have a male in their household such as a step-father, uncle, grandfather or even an older sibling who can provide them with fathering.
Others, with the support of female gatekeepers, can have access to their biological fathers (often withheld because of estrangement between parents, or because the father did not pay inhlawulo, the damages owing to the family following a pregnancy out of wedlock).
In the absence of a biological father, social fathering can provide boys with a positive masculine role model.
In addition, since the poor quality of a child’s relationship with his female caregiver as well as a poorer knowledge by the caregiver of the child’s whereabouts, friends and activities are all risk factors for violence, mothers have an important role to play in providing boys with opportunities for meaningful connection and communication.
Mothers and social fathers can also help boys to learn about sex and sexuality in healthy, age-appropriate ways, and counteract the negative messaging about sex and intimacy that boys are learning from pornography.
Experts underlined the importance of interrogating rigid gender roles, specifically the burden of financial provision, and stereotypes about boys being emotionally distant, unwilling to show emotion and not in need of nurturing or guidance.
Delaying independence, promoting accountability and assisting boys to navigate their relationships and online world are all essential to counteract feelings of isolation, loneliness and hopelessness and prevent early and sustained exposure to violence.
Delegates stressed that being male has an associated trauma where boys are not allowed to express who they are, to love or to show love, seek the help they need, or remain connected in a way they need. Given that childhood experience and trauma shape violent behaviour later in life, and many parents believe that their son “does not know how to show love”, it is critical to go upstream to prevent trauma both from specific experiences, but also the normative trauma of boyhood.
Breaking the cycle of violence
In the Family for Every Child report, researchers identified the need for primary, secondary and tertiary interventions to address gendered social norms, raise awareness about sexual violence against boys, and develop protective mechanisms by strengthening families, dealing with dysfunction, as well as teaching families to provide relationship and sex education.
They also underlined the need to deal with trauma and other adverse childhood experiences to protect children from harmful sexual behaviours and vulnerability to abuse; for the training of practitioners; and critically, for policy amendments.
Coupled with these legislative and policy changes, there’s a need for increased funding for programmes associated with boyhood, including through utilising social fathering and those providing positive rites of passage, along with interventions focused specifically on boys who are victims of physical and sexual violence.
Addressing the crisis in boyhood is going to take connection, communication, a safe space for boys to express emotion, a reworking of the social script and rigid stereotypes around manhood and a process of unlearning.
Crucially, dismantling patriarchy will no longer suffice to make these changes, the pendulum needs to swing away from the “men are trash” extreme too.
Combating despair and breaking the cycle of violence is at stake – we can’t afford to fail.
First published in the Daily Maverick 5th August 2024
by Robyn Wolfson Vorster | Mar 24, 2024 | Child Abuse, Child Protection Legislation & Child Rights, Children’s Online World
Sexting, shared nudes and sextortion are part of a worrying trend among many South African and overseas kids and teens, despite big tech’s promises that it’s taking steps to protect children online. Peer pressure, bullying and even voluntary participation is on the rise. But parents can do something about it.
In 2022, an audit of websites containing sexual photos or videos of children found that 92% included content that children had created themselves. Almost 60% of self-generated sexual abuse images were of children aged between 11 and 13, and more than a third were of children aged seven to 10. The youngest victim was only three.
Children euphemistically call them “nudes”. They are naked photos or videos that children take and share of themselves. Sexting ranges in severity from images taken of their naked bodies, to those involving penetrative sexual activity, including sadism and bestiality.
They have become a pervasive part of our children’s lives.
In the documentary Childhood 2.0, American teens describe how many relationships now begin with the sharing of nudes. Chatting, holding hands, going on a date, hugs and kisses, and other courtship rituals are preceded by the exchange of naked photos.
And, like a job interview, the image becomes a gateway into the relationship, or the barrier to entry.
Teens interviewed for the documentary describe how girls who share nudes are called sluts and those who don’t, prudes. Boys, who often initiate contact by sending a “dick pick”, trade the nudes they receive like baseball cards.
While the perpetrators are often criminal syndicates, one of South Africa’s most notorious sextorters was a middle-aged Afrikaans housewife who preyed on boys in her community.
A study by ECPAT, a global network of civil society organisations dedicated to ending child sexual exploitation, included this testimony from a 17-year-old girl:
“I’ve been sent hundreds of dick pics I haven’t asked for. When I was younger, I chatted with dozens of paedophiles, I told them my age (11–13) and they wanted nudes… or [to] meet in real life to have sex.”
The report noted that “nude photographs of girls are viewed as a form of capital that gives status to the recipient”. This increases the pressure placed on girls “to share naked photos” and on boys “to share them if and when they receive them”.
For many of these boys, admission into peer groups is now predicated on sharing a nude or adding it to an online folder of images. These are then accessible to other boys who’ve gone through a similar rite of passage.
Peer pressure school practices
At an upmarket high school in Pretoria, Grade 10 boys formed a WhatsApp group, which boys were only allowed to join if they shared a naked photo of a girl. Girls describe being pressurised to share naked photos with their boyfriends so the boys could be accepted into the group. And at a prestigious boy’s school in Johannesburg, a Grade 8 boarder spent his school holidays trying to “collect nudes” to be included in a closed group of his new peers.
During a campaign called “Because you asked”, run by Jelly Beanz, who provide help for abused children, 12-and 13-year-old children shared their experience of sexting.
Weeks later, Nathan learnt that more than 50 Grade 9 boys at his school had been sextorted by the syndicate. Ashamed, humiliated, and unable to tell his parents, one boy had been hospitalised after attempting suicide.
One Grade 7 girl described how an older boy at school bullied, manipulated and threatened her, protesting that if she loved him, she’d share nudes. When she eventually capitulated, he told the whole grade, adding that she sleeps around. She felt judged and mortified, but afraid that if she sought help from adults, it would change their opinion of her and they would take away her phone.
Two Grade 6 girls reported sexting with “boys” on Snapchat and TikTok, who complimented them on their bodies, but turned out to be masturbating middle-aged men.
Another 12-year-old “met” a boy on Instagram who seemed cute and her age. He asked for her number, requested selfies to “see her beautiful face”, then asked for nudes. When she declined, he used Facebook and Instagram to add and message her friends and family members, instructing them to make the girl obey him, and asking her friends for naked pics. One, aged nine, complied.
Desperate, the 12-year-old thought if she sent him a picture of herself in her swimming costume, he’d stop harassing her. Instead, he posted the pic and her phone number on a pornographic site, then sent her a screenshot. After three calls from men asking to meet up, she finally sought help from her mother.
Read more in Daily Maverick: Attempts to stop the child-related pornography tsunami stalled indefinitely
Albeit regretful that her child hadn’t spoken up sooner, her mother comforted her and reported the abuser to the police who helped them remove the post and block the perpetrator from the child’s social media. But he was let off with a warning.
As this child experienced, once shared, many images and videos end up on sites containing child sexual abuse material.
Previously called “child pornography”, child sexual abuse material (CSAM) includes any images or videos which depict children under 18 engaged in sexually explicit acts.
Global internet watchdog
Global internet safety watchdog Internet Watch Foundation reports that 10 years ago there was no self-generated content on sites containing CSAM. But in 2022, it found 275,655 websites containing CSAM, 92% of which included photos or videos that children had generated themselves. Almost 60% of reported images were taken by children aged 11-13, more than a third were seven to 10-year-olds, and 4% of images were taken by three to six-year-olds.
The charity’s CEO explains: “That’s children in their bedrooms, where they’ve been tricked, coerced or encouraged into engaging in sexual activity, which is then recorded and shared by child sexual abuse websites.”
Reporting an image on a social media platform is often ineffectual, leading to ongoing revictimisation. A National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) study found that one image was shared 490,000 times after it had been reported.
Experts explain that self-generated child abuse images can be shared intentionally, accidentally, through coercion, maliciously, or a combination of these factors.
Already common among girls, extortion of boys for images or money is becoming increasingly widespread.
The NCMEC describes sextortion as a form of child sexual exploitation in which children are blackmailed using nude or sexual images of themselves, in exchange for more illicit material, sexual acts or financial gain. The US Department of Justice reported that in 2022, more than 3,000 minors, primarily boys, had been targeted globally using financial sextortion, a sharp increase from previous years. More than a dozen victims had died by suicide.
In a 2023 study by Snap Inc, more than two thirds of the 6,000 Gen Z children and young adults surveyed across six countries said that they had been sextorted. In Canada, 92% of sextortion cases in 2023 involved boys or men. In the UK, sextortion cases reported to the police increased by 390% in two years. Experts believe that approximately 100 UK children a day are falling victim.
While the perpetrators are often criminal syndicates, one of South Africa’s most notorious sextorters was a middle-aged Afrikaans housewife who preyed on boys in her community.
And, in a worrying new trend, criminals are recruiting and paying children to sextort other children.
Britain’s National Crime Agency confirms how enticing sextortion scams are and that predators now use AI to make their conversations more convincing.
One affected boy is Nathan*, a Grade 9 learner, who was surprised when he was friended by an attractive unknown teenage girl on Instagram, who said she was new to the province and was given his details by a mutual friend.
Nathan, who’d never had a girlfriend, was delighted, and they chatted about school, family and friends every day, initially on Instagram, and then, after she told him her mom had restricted her Instagram screen-time, on WhatsApp. Before long, they were exchanging pictures of their daily activities. Then she asked if he’d like to see her in her bikini. A week after they “met”, in a flirty conversation, she asked if they could exchange nudes.
He only hesitated for a moment.
She responded with a heart, but minutes later texted that if he didn’t pay R2,000 within 24 hours “she’d” be sharing his picture on Instagram, and with his friends and family. Horrified, and under time pressure, he emptied his meagre bank account and begged to have the photo deleted.
Instead, follow-up messages instructed him to pay more or send pics of himself in specific sexual poses. After sharing a photo of himself masturbating, he contemplated taking his own life, before reluctantly choosing to tell his mom.
Despite her initial shock, she immediately sought professional help. Internet safety experts coached Nathan about how to respond to his extorter and how to block and report “her” to the specialised police cybercrimes unit.
Weeks later, Nathan learnt that more than 50 Grade 9 boys at his school had been sextorted by the syndicate. Ashamed, humiliated, and unable to tell his parents, one boy had been hospitalised after attempting suicide.
Not all children survive though. Ronan, 17, from Northern Ireland, committed suicide after being targeted on Facebook. Told to send the perpetrators £3,400 in cybercurrency, he protested that he was only a child, and begged for mercy. They responded: “Foolishness has a price. And you’ll pay. You have 48 hours. Time is running out.”
Tragically, Ronan saw no way out.
Sextorters routinely encourage suicide and threaten violence. One 16-year-old boy reported: “I’ve received death threats a couple of times, and they’ve also threatened to kill my family if I don’t send photographs.”
Nevertheless, not all children think sharing nudes is risky.
Nudes = in love
Unlike Nathan, Sindi*, 13, wasn’t tricked or manipulated into sexting. For her, exchanging “nudes” was a normal expression of being in love.
While only 5% of children surveyed in the South African Disrupting Harm study confessed to sexting in the previous year (compared to 50% of the children in the Scandinavian study, so there is probably under-reporting), half said they shared nudes because they were in love, or flirting and having fun.
Confirming the Scandinavian findings, these children deemed sexting unproblematic. They saw it as a positive experience, part of a healthy relationship, good for their self-esteem, and a way of “gaining affirmation and creating intimacy with people they like”.
To quote one 16-year-old girl, “it’s happened a hundred times… usually just flirting online and then you take more and more daring photographs until the guy asks for a nude and I’m like yeah, no big deal, if we’re both fine with it.”
Children who willingly share nudes aren’t immune from harm thereafter though.
Sindi and her boyfriend exchanged nudes for six months, using Snapchat to ensure that their parents didn’t find out. But she was unaware that her boyfriend had made screenshots of every image and shared her photos with his friends.
Then, after the relationship ended, his jealous new girlfriend found Sindi’s photos, shared them with Sindi’s parents and posted them onto a grade WhatsApp group. Before they could be deleted, they’d already been reshared and saved by many other children in the grade.
Devastated, Sindi was forced to leave the school.
As the lines between intentionality, accidental sharing, and malicious sexting blur, experts have identified another growing trend where children are filming other children having consensual sex, and then forwarding those videos.
Children also document and share the sexual assault and rape of other children, with devastating impact, as seen in the documentary Audrie and Daisy. The girls’ sexual assaults were filmed, and images circulated. It resulted in tragedy, first Audrie’s death by suicide, and then Daisy and her mother taking their own lives after the documentary aired.
While most children unwittingly share their images publicly, Tami*, discovered at age 12 that she could make money through TikTok videos of herself dancing naked.
US tech Senate hearings
Despite the CEO of TikTok testifying before the US Senate hearings that children under 13 are protected on the app, under sixteens automatically have privacy settings restricting their sharing to friends only, and under eighteens cannot live-stream or receive remuneration, Tami easily circumvented these restrictions.
Tami received thousands of likes from strangers for her publicly posted videos. Many asked if they could see more of her. As she slowly got braver, taking off pieces of clothing and making sexual moves, viewers began to tip her.
By age 15, she was paying for transport, groceries, airtime and new outfits with the proceeds of her videos.
In 2021, a Unicef SA and Department of Social Development commissioned survey by Unisa’s Bureau of Market Research found that one-third of SA children were at risk of online violence, exploitation and abuse, and 70% of children surveyed used the internet without parental consent.
Preventing or minimising the harm is therefore critical. Experts, who caution parents to avoid panic policing or believing that it’s “not my kid”, emphasise that it takes a team effort to keep children safe.
Denial, they say, is particularly damaging. Your child’s developing brain, unsupported, pitted against criminal syndicates, perpetrators, manipulation, and the multibillion-dollar pornography industry, isn’t a fair fight.
Dr Marita Rademeyer, a clinical psychologist who has worked with children and families affected by abuse for 30 years, says that given the exploding numbers of under thirteens sexting, parents should try to delay giving their child a smartphone and allowing access to social media, instead opting for an old-school handset for communication.
Rademeyer recommends that if children already have smartphones, parents limit their screen time.
In addition, experts advise parents to manage when their children are online, preventing use of devices late at night, and behind closed doors in bedrooms and bathrooms.
Internet safety tools can assist with managing use, content and contact. Tech giants Instagram, Facebook, Google, TikTok, Snapchat and Discord also have parent-partnering centres where parents can manage in-app screen time, which topics their child can access, who can view their posts, and friend requests.
Wired to push boundaries
Rademeyer stresses however that while parents often rely on fear and control to police sexting, the adolescent brain is wired to push boundaries. So, although restrictions and protective apps are effective for very young children, control is often unsuccessful for older children.
A relationship is critical for protecting children, and restrictions without relationship can drive the behaviour underground.
She explains that the problem isn’t just the naked pics, nor is it helpful to instruct children to simply avoid taking or sharing pics. Instead, she says, “it is the sexualisation of children online which desensitises them to the potential impact of sharing images of themselves.”
Rademeyer advises parents to begin speaking to their children early and often about sex and sexuality, starting as young as age five, and to chase the “why” behind their child’s behaviours.
Explaining that children often share nudes because they have a need for acceptance and belonging and because they are looking for affirmation that they aren’t getting elsewhere, she confirms that the need can easily outweigh even the strongest and most sustained safety messaging. By contrast, addressing that need can help minimise risky behaviours.
The tweens who participated in the ‘Because you asked’ study cautioned children to be careful about what they post online and who they follow and friend, to prepare for “bad things”, and to confide in a trusted adult.
But only 6% of children do tell caregivers about online child sexual exploitation and abuse. Many tell peers, but most tell no one for fear of humiliation, or their devices being confiscated.
Caregivers should therefore avoid warning, shaming and blaming, and banning phones or the child’s access to their online world, which results in secrecy and children concealing harm.
How to deal with disclosure
If your child discloses that they’ve been targeted, try to stay calm and remember that your child is the victim, not the villain.
Carefully document the interactions, tell the perpetrator you will be contacting the authorities, then block and report the account. If your child’s images and videos have already been posted online, use IWF’s “Report remove” site, or Take it Down to get the content flagged and removed from the internet.
Both services are focussed on children, but if you want an explicit image taken when you were over 18 deleted, get help at stopncii.org.
Lasting change will require legislation and litigation-driven accountability by big tech for the safety of its billions of users. Like the UK, a slew of legislation is in process in the US to keep tech companies accountable and allow them to be sued or fined if their users, especially children, are harmed.
But progress is proving slow, and in South Africa, it isn’t even on our legislative radar (proposed law reforms haven’t been actioned two years after drafting).
Millions of local children cannot wait for legislators to catch up, or for curriculum changes to educate them about inherent dangers of online use (which sometimes outweigh the positives). What’s urgently needed is a community, school, family and child partnership to keep them safe.
The time for looking away is over — if sexting is our children’s new normal, and adults remain in denial, they’ll reap the whirlwind and ultimately, so will we.
First published in the Daily Maverick 24.03.2024
Contact Childline on 116 (tollfree 24/7) if your child needs help with sexting or sextortion.
* names changed to protect the victims.
