Has the corona pandemic led to more cases of sexual violence? That’s not so easy to answer statistically. But experts see at least indications that this is the case.
Berlin (dpa) – The abuse commissioner of the federal government warned against failure in the fight against child abuse with drastic words.
“A tipping point has been reached here – we have to prevent the system from collapsing,” said Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig on Wednesday in Berlin. In particular, he warned of police bottlenecks that could slow down the investigation.
Together with the President of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), Holger Münch, Rörig presented the latest figures from the police crime statistics on violence against children. According to this, the police registered more cases of child abuse and the mistreatment of wards in the past year.
The number of maltreatment of wards rose by 10 percent to 4918 cases, and in the case of child abuse it rose by 6.8 percent to over 14,500 cases. The number of recorded cases of child pornography rose by more than 50 percent to 18,761. 152 children were violently killed. Most of these victims, 115, were under 6 years old. The total number increased by 40 compared to 2019.
The number of cases in which minors themselves distributed, acquired, owned or produced abuse images also grew rapidly. According to statistics, it increased more than fivefold last year compared to 2018 (7643 cases in 2020, 1373 cases in 2018). Social media played an important role here. Behind the numbers stand “ ten thousand times the suffering of children and adolescents, “ said Rörig.
Not all of the acts reported for 2020 occurred in the past year, as Münch explained. The statistic is an initial statistic, i.e. it records the cases at a point in time at which the police have completed their processing. More than a quarter of the recorded crimes did not happen in 2020, but already before. There is also a high number of unreported cases.
According to BKA boss Münch, this question is “extremely difficult to answer” whether the increased numbers actually reflect a growing number of criminal offenses or rather more successful investigations. There are always only hints. However, it can be assumed that the corona pandemic has promoted an increase in violence and also sexual violence.
This is also what the President of the German Child Protection Association, Heinz Hilgers, assumes. “During the pandemic, many families lived together under high stress in a confined space. The increased stress of many parents through home schooling and home office, often with insufficient technical equipment, has exacerbated the stress, ”he told the German Press Agency.
Rörig demanded: “The fight against sexual violence in Germany as a whole must become a top priority.” It was “very central to the relationship between data protection and child protection”, he explained, referring to the data retention in Germany, which was suspended after the rulings of the European Court of Justice. In this case, providers would be obliged to save users’ telephone and Internet connection data for up to ten weeks so that investigators can access them later if necessary. Some providers are currently not storing any data, said Münch. Others held them up for up to seven days. The police must therefore always investigate any evidence of child pornography very quickly.
According to Münch, many reports reach the German authorities every day via the semi-governmental agency NCMEC (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children) in the USA, which collects information on depictions of sexual violence against children worldwide and forwards them to national authorities. From February, Münch also expects more information from Germany. Then a tightening of the Network Enforcement Act passed in the spring comes into force, according to which social networks must report criminal postings on hate crime or child pornography to the BKA.
Münch also praised the action taken by the North Rhine-Westphalian authorities: for example, forensic data is stored there in a shared memory that can be accessed by various departments, and staff have been massively increased. Recently – also against the background of the abuse cases in Lüdge in Lippe, in Münster and Bergisch Gladbach – NRW pushed the fight against child abuse. For example, a prototype with artificial intelligence is to scan floods of data for child pornography and child abuse in the future and thus support the work of the public prosecutor’s office.
“Behind every single case is the fate of a child who suffered from this act for a lifetime,” said Federal Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD). “We are doing everything we can to protect children from it.” According to new regulations that come into force in July, anyone who sexually abuses children, takes photos or pictures of them, or distributes or even only owns such recordings, should therefore be classified as criminals to get punished. This threatens a minimum sentence of one year in prison.
For the time after the election in September, the abuse commissioner Rörig called for a Bundestag commission in which data protectionists, child protectionists, investigators and company representatives work together to develop a strategy to combat sexual violence online.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210526-99-749213 / 4
Numbers of child victims of violence in 2020
Federal Ministry of Justice on the Network Enforcement Act
Federal Ministry of Justice on the legislative package to combat sexual violence
Federal Ministry of Justice on the legislative package against hatred and agitation
