Youngsters on the line

Tip of the iceberg

Elia Yeung Man-wai, executive manager of the End Child Sexual Abuse Foundation, believes that the number of cases of online sexual violence given by the police may be just the tip of the iceberg.

Most incidents were exposed when family members stumbled upon evidence on a child's phone. In some instances, children are threatened after someone has taken compromising photos of them, forcing them to seek help from teachers and parents. There are also cases of children unintentionally and mistakenly sharing explicit content on the internet with the wrong people, according to Yeung.

Victims who feel fear, shame or embarrassment may not reveal their plight voluntarily. Compounding the problem, many students lack a clear understanding of online sexual violence, resulting in many cases being unnoticed, even by the victims themselves.

Drawing from her experience in handling cases of sexual violence, Yeung estimates that up to 70 percent of such cases go unreported.

Carol Szeto, chief executive officer of Save the Children Hong Kong, says the rate of nonconsensual online sexual experiences among teenagers is alarmingly high.

Based on a survey done by Save the Children Hong Kong in 2022, one out of every five teenagers encountered "cyberflashing", which involves receiving unwanted sexual images on the internet. Approximately, one in 10 students had experienced online sexual harassment, while one in 20 had received requests to share explicit photos of themselves. Five percent of the respondents reported having been coerced into engaging in involuntary sexual acts online.