London, Mar 4 (ANI): Children as young as five are committing thousands of sexual offences as pornography on Internet is warping youngsters’ views of “normal behaviour”, a British watchdog has said.
According to figures released under the Freedom of Information Act, over 5,000 child sex offences, including rape and other serious sex attacks, were recorded by police in the last three years where the abuser was under 18.
At least three forces, Avon and Somerset, Humberside and Cambridgeshire, all showed abusers as young as five, said National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).
The NSPCC said it was often the case they were mimicking things they simply should not have seen at such a young age, the Telegraph reports.
The children may have seen pornography on an older brother’s computer, shared a bedroom with teenagers and witnessed inappropriate behaviour, or could have been allowed in a room while parents were watching sex scenes on the television, it added.
According to the paper, Claire Lilley, policy adviser at the NSPCC, said Britain needed to do more to shield children from an “increasingly sexualised society”.
Three out of five child victims knew their attacker, in one in three cases it was a family friend or acquaintance, and in one in five it was a family member, the NSPCC said. (ANI)