Jess Phillips – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jess Phillips on 2016-02-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the number of children (a) under 16 and (b) between 16 and 18 who have been groomed on social media sites in each year since 2010.

Karen Bradley

Significant under-reporting of online grooming is likely and it is therefore difficult fully to quantify numbers. The National Strategic Assessment of Serious and Organised Crime, issued by the National Crime Agency, recognises child sexual exploitation and abuse as one of the highest serious and organised crime risks and the Home Office has published a review of the evidence on cybercrime, including online grooming (Cyber Crime: A Review of the Evidence Research Report 75. Chapter 3: Cyber-enabled crimes – sexual offending against children, McGuire and Dowling 2013).