Recently I spent two days up in London at the BT-One Centre at a conference hosted by Marie Collins Foundation regarding Technology-Assisted Child Sexual Abuse.
Whilst I appreciate this subject (once again) is not everyone's cup of tea, I wanted to attend the conference for a several reasons -
1) To enable me and the other Safeguarding Team members at Cranleigh to be better equipped at recognising victims of TA-CSA
2) To enable me and the other Safeguarding Team members to be better equipped at responding and supporting victims of TA-CSA
3) To enable us to disseminate that information through to the rest of the school.
So what is TA-CSA? In the last decade, there has been a rapid growth in the sexual abuse of children and young people that is facilitated by technology, most commonly, the use of technology in abuse is assumed to be about the viewing or uploading of images onto the internet, for example via the Surface and/or Dark Web. These are known as CSAMs (Child Sexual Abuse Material). However, it can also be in the form of self generated picture that is now being used to blackmail a child or coerce them into sending more pictures (known as sextortion), grooming or children being encouraged to access adult porn sites.
I do appreciate this is such a daunting subject, therefore I wanted to share with you some of the resources I was given from the course. If you have any questions, queries or just want to talk anything through, please contact me on 01483 927559 or email sff@cranleigh.org