Gone too far on the net? Report it

Police are encouraging the use of a new website that arms youth with practical steps and advice on how to confront a situation that has gone too far online. The Canadian Centre for Child Protection (CCCP) has created NeedHelpNow.ca for young people to find information on how to remove pictures posted online, obtain coping tools and learn how to report online incidents they deem inappropriate. “We find that teenagers and young people are just not aware of who they are talking to in the internet world,” Sex Crimes Unit Child Exploitation Section Det. Const. Michele Bond said. “This is a tool that kids can reach out to when they find themselves in a predicament.” Bond said most young people do not disclose tasteless internet activities to their parents for fear of repercussions at home. “Their biggest fear is that the internet will be taken away from them,” she said. Teenage girls can often be taken advantage of by someone they know well also. CCCP has received reports of former boyfriends sharing sexually explicit pictures as revenge, or to extort more pictures from a victim by threatening to post a picture online. Signy Arnason, director of Cybertip.ca at the CCCP, said the site is designed to talk to young people about ways and strategies to get the content off the internet, how they deal with their peers and when they need to get a safe adult involved in the process. “It’s for when something’s gone too far and it provides some important strategies for coping and managing through what is inevitably a difficult situation,” she said. Individuals can show their support for the initiative by sending personal tweets or re-tweeting, using words that include #YouthAreNotAlone and/or #NeedHelpNow. The Service has been working with the CCCP in the past 12 months to develop and distribute educational material on sexting. Cybertip.ca is used by the public to report questionable or clearly illegal child exploitation online. The CCCP reports to the appropriate law-enforcement agency for enforcement when the content is found to be illegal. Source