Online harassment can take a serious toll on their mental health. The words, pictures, video clips or any form of data stored on the internet stay forever, haunting the victim
The nationwide lockdown necessitated by the pandemic forced people to work from home. Schools and colleges, too, shifted to remote and online functioning. While this protected children/teenagers from exposure to the Coronavirus, migration of classrooms to remote learning environments increased the time they spend online, both for education and entertainment purposes. Prolonged online presence during the lockdon exposed minors to unsupervised interaction with strangers and third parties. Consequently, within a few months of the lockdown in India, the Bois Locker Room scandal broke out on social media where a group of teenagers accessed photos of women and girls from social media pages. The group posted lewd comments on the photographs on an Instagram group and issued rape threats to women/girls who demanded action against them. Fortunately, Delhi Police and its Cyber Cell took action against the group under the Penal Code and Cyber laws.
Cyberbullying, cyberstalking, online impersonation, catfishing, doxxing, trolling, revenge porn, sexting, grooming and sexual exploitation are some common forms of online harassment. According to a study published by Child Rights and You, 9.2 per cent of 630 adolescents surveyed in Delhi-NCR experienced cyberbullying and half of them did not report this to either their teachers, parents or guardians. Further, it found that children aged 13-18 years, who use the internet for more than three hours in a day, are more prone to risks. Online harassment can take a serious toll on their mental health. The words, pictures, video clips or any form of data stored on the internet stay forever, haunting the victim. This spreads fast and cannot be erased or forgotten.
In October 2020, the Delhi High Court (HC) while directing Google, YouTube and Facebook to remove objectionable material posted by a woman’s former schoolmate without her consent, also ordered the police to use the protocols and resources available with the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and other agencies to identify people sharing/viewing the offensive content in India and take action against them. The victim said that in 2012, as a 16-year-old, she was emotionally blackmailed by the accused into sending him intimate photographs. He threatened to commit suicide if she did not comply with his demands. The harassment continued until 2017 in the UK where the Magistrate Court held him guilty of stalking and physically assaulting her. The court passed orders restraining the accused from contacting the victim by any means and banned him from entering the city of Bath for two years. In late 2019, the victim found that the accused had posted her intimate pictures on various social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and so on and reported the matter to the Cyber Crime Cell in Delhi. The cyber police registered cases against the accused under Sections 67 and 67A of the Information Technology Act. The victim also sent notices to Google and social media networks, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram urging them to remove her photographs. However, the URLs/webpages were not removed. The court acknowledged that the offending images had been widely distributed and that they were being uploaded by several people other than the accused. The court ordered the police to identify the people sharing the images.
According to the UNICEF, a child goes online for the first time in his/her life every half a second. The digital world provides easier access to child sex offenders in search of prey/potential victims and also enable them to share information about victims with perpetrators of sexual crimes. Recent surveys reveal that at least one in four adolescents have seen a morphed image or video of themselves and, a half of them have not reported it to the police.
In 2019, Facebook published that it had removed 11.6 million posts related to child nudity and sexual exploitation from its webpages and 7,54,000 from Instagram. For the first time, Facebook published figures related to self-harm and suicide revealing that it had removed 2.5 million posts related to suicide and self-harm and 8,45,000 from Instagram. Among the users of the internet, children are highly likely to be exposed to violence since they have fewer opportunities than adults to leave the house and access help, according to a report published by the WHO on June 17, 2020. Smaller children are less likely to understand that they have been subjected to online harassment and know that they must seek help. The lack of support networks in schools and the increase in the time spent online, too, are reasons for the spike in cyber crimes against children during the pandemic.
Laws: The substantive equality approach adopted by India and expressed in Article 15(3) of the Constitution empowers the State to make special provisions for children. Article 39 provides that the State shall direct its policy towards securing children and ensure that they are not abused and their childhood and youth are protected against exploitation. It further emphasises the need to provide facilities for them to develop in a healthy manner and in conditions of freedom and dignity.
The international instrument, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) prescribes a set of standards to be followed by all parties to secure the best interests of children. States are required to undertake all appropriate national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent inducement or coercion of a minor to engage in any unlawful sexual activity, the exploitative use of children in prostitution or other unlawful sexual conduct and the exploitative use of children in pornographic performances and material. The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, is a gender-neutral law that came into force exclusively to protect children from sexual assault, harassment and pornography. The POCSO Act recognises the fact that minors are vulnerable to repeated abuse and at risk of secondary victimisation during the justice delivery process and hence, emphasised on the need for the establishment of special courts for them. Sections 13, 14 and 15 of the Act, particularly address the crime of using a minor for pornographic purposes and punishes any person who stores or possesses pornographic material in any form involving a child.
Human rights begin at birth, as envisaged in Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Human and child rights are inalienable ones, which means that no State-run entity or the State itself cannot deprive children of their rights. The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child and the legislations that were promulgated in the member States have often been misconstrued as rights of children based on their needs. But these rights are independent in a true sense and recognise children as independent citizens with a voice.
Keeping children safe: Child rights are congruent with the obligations imposed on the State and caregivers and their accountability. Schools, parents and guardians must ensure that the online safety of children is not compromised and they don’t befriend strangers online. The police, who are responsible for law enforcement must keep a watch out for offenders in cyberspaces and must strive to keep it safe for children. Schools and caregivers must ensure that safety and security of children are of paramount importance. They must train children to report suspicious accounts. Electronic devices must be used under the supervision of a trusted adult, and the privacy settings of the devices must be checked regularly to keep minors away from online predators.
Children must be encouraged to take screenshots of any content that makes them feel uneasy and report it to the parents/authorities to take it down from the internet. They must be made aware by their parents/guardians that sharing of personal information such as location, phone numbers, date of birth and addresses must not be done. Children must be encouraged to seek help in times of distress. Parents and caregivers must assure minors that they are not alone and that the adults in their life are always available to address their worries and concerns.
The Ministry of Women and Child Development has launched a toll-free 24-hour telephonic helpline service 1098, which operates in regional languages to reach out to children in distress across India. A trained contact officer answers the calls on the helpline and forwards the message to a field partner on the ground. The field partner sends a member to the rescue of the child within an hour or two from the time they receive the call and ensures the safety of the child.
Overexposure to the internet during the pandemic had resulted in the extension of child helpline services to children using the internet to ensure their online safety and psychological well-being. Schools and caregivers must take the responsibility to make children aware about the toll-free child helpline service. Counselling facilities, too, must be made available for children who have been subjected to online harassment and bullying.
(The writer is Advocate, Supreme Court of India and Partner, Dua Associates. The views expressed are personal.)
