My Lords, the purpose of this amendment is to create an offence where an adult engages in a sexual communication with a child or—this is very important—seeks to elicit from that child a sexual communication in response.
The amendment covers verbal, written or pictorial communication. It includes video communication and it covers all forms of communication whether by telephone, the internet, instant messaging and even gaming systems, such as the Xbox. This brings the law in this part of the United Kingdom into line with the law in Scotland, so this is not new territory. I am grateful to the NSPCC for the discussions and briefings I have had, and I know it has had discussions with a number of other noble Lords on this matter. I note that on Friday it launched an online petition on precisely this issue and that by last night it had already achieved 20,000 signatures, so there is a degree of interest and of belief that this is necessary. Indeed, if you speak to many parents, you come across the argument time and time again about why this is important and their concerns for their teenage and younger children.
The reality is that the current law that purports to cover these issues is fragmented and confused. It makes it hard for the police to bring suitable cases against perpetrators and what legislation there is by and large pre-dates the widespread use of the internet and social networking sites. In practice, the current law fails to recognise the nature of grooming. In grooming the perpetrator is not trying to be offensive to the child, to frighten the child or to intimidate the child. The abuser is trying to flatter the child and to persuade the child that they are the person who matters and the only person who cares for them and, as part of that, to persuade the child to respond to them sexually and send them sexual or indecent communications.
This is a widespread problem. Last year, ChildLine reported an increase of 168% in contacts of this nature. ChildLine is receiving reports daily of large
numbers of these cases. For example, a 15 year-old girl was groomed by someone who she thought was 17. In fact, he was 44. She met him through a social networking site, and they chatted online most nights. In his guise as a 17 year-old boy, he said that he was in love with her. He started talking about more sexual things. At first she was not too worried as her friends told her that this was just what boys did. She then sent him a picture of herself naked. He had elicited that picture. At this point, he admitted that in fact he was 44 but said that age did not matter and that he really loved her. When the girl said that she was going to stop the contact, he threatened to share her images on the internet and tell all her friends what she had done. That is a real case from ChildLine of the sort of thing that happens. It would have been quite difficult to take the man concerned to court, as I understand it, on the existing basis.
By contrast, there is a case study from Scotland. It concerns a Mr James Sinclair who was 25. He gave a 14 year-old girl a mobile phone and sent her a series of sexual text messages. The girl’s family found the messages and contacted the police to report the matter. The family had reportedly tried for some time to stop the victim having any contact with the accused, but those efforts proved unsuccessful. Police officers examined her mobile phone and traced and detained the offender. Sinclair was put on the sexual offenders register. Under the current law in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, he could not have been prosecuted because he could have mounted a defence that he did not intend to cause distress or anxiety as the child seemed willingly to engage in the sexualised conversation. That is the context in which we are talking here. The current law is inadequate.
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I do not know what is in the Minister’s brief but my experience of Home Office briefings on these matters is that they almost always say, “Ah no, there is an existing offence that covers that”. I am not sure I agree. Existing legislation simply is not clear enough and in many cases the defence could argue that the threshold required for the communication to be covered by the offence had not been met. For example, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 covers only situations where it can be proved that the adult intends to meet the child. Increasingly, abusers online have no intention of meeting the child and abusing them physically. This is all about online grooming. They want to extract the sexualised pictures or whatever else it might be. The Sexual Offences Act does not cover that. Perhaps the Minister is going to talk about the Malicious Communications Act 1988. Under that legislation there must be an,
“intent to cause distress or anxiety”.
However, as I have already said, abusers operate in the exact opposite way. They flatter the child. They make the child feel special in order to build up the child’s trust. Importantly, anyone, even if convicted of this offence, would not be subject to sexual offender registration and notification requirements.
It may also be that the Minister will be relying on the Communications Act 2003. The defence there could argue that the threshold of,
“a message … that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”
has not been met. Again, importantly, anyone so convicted would not be subject to sex offender registration and notification requirements but there the focus is on the message sent by the perpetrator to the child and it needing to be grossly offensive or indecent, obscene or menacing. In most of these instances the message sent to the child is flattering; it is persuasive. It is encouraging the child. It is not grossly offensive; it does not need to be as it is trying to persuade the child to send an image of themselves. It does not have to be obscene or menacing because this is about flattery and persuasion.
I believe that the current law is inadequate in protecting children from online abuse and that the standalone offence in this amendment is needed to ensure that the law is clear. It makes it clear that intentionally sending a sexual communication to a child is illegal and there are definitions in the amendment as to what constitutes an adult and what constitutes a child. Moreover, it would make it illegal to seek to elicit a sexual response from a child by means of a communication. I believe that this will help prevent abuse from escalating and protect children from sexual material in this way. I beg to move.