Watchdog report finds almost 900 instances of more severe form of child abuse content

  • According to the Internet Watchdog Foundation (IWF), children as young as seven are being forced to penetrate themselves with household objects for the sexual gratification of online predators.
  • The content analysed in the study had been shared online by the abuser, or abusers, who had been remote to the child and connected via the internet.
  • IWF CEO Susie Hargreaves commented “It’s vital that the UK Government’s Online Safety Bill is returned to Parliament as soon as possible, so that more is done to tackle this issue.”
  • For more on this story, please visit the IWF website.

Facebook to remove information fields from profiles

  • Starting next month, the platform will be removing four information fields from a user’s profile.
  • This includes religious and political views, addresses and the ‘interested in’ field which indicates sexual orientation.
  • The decision to remove these fields may be in efforts to have a similar ‘bio’ feature to other platforms, but may also lessen the risk of sharing private information.
  • To read more, please visit the Tech Crunch website.

Hunt pledges £4.6bn more for schools, saying good education is ‘moral mission’

  • Jeremy Hunt said the Government will invest an extra £2.3 billion per year in schools over the next two years.
  • Schools have welcomed the funding pledge, but warned the sector still faces a ‘teacher recruitment and retention crisis’.
  • Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said they hoped the extra money could “help bring schools back from the cliff edge that they have been teetering on”.
  • To read more, please visit the Express and Star website.

5% of police strip-searches carried out on children

  • More than 3,000 children were strip-searched by police in a year, and more than a third were black, figures show.
  • Only 9% of strip-searches of children ages 10-17 took place in custody.
  • This report release follows the Child Q scandal earlier this year, in which a 15-year-old girl was strip-searched at school by police while on her period.
  • For more on this, please visit the Independent website.