The abundance of sexually explicit content on the Internet may be contributing to a growing number of sexual crimes committed by juvenile delinquents, the Garden of Hope Foundation (
"If we don't control access to sexually explicit information online for those who are underage, impressionable teenagers may adopt improper attitudes to sex and commit sexual crimes," said Chi Hui-jung (
According to statistics from the Ministry of the Interior (
The number 12- to 17-year-olds involved in sexual crimes in 1997, 1998 and 1999 were 362, 393 and 408 respectively. The number of young adults aged from 18 to 23 involved in similar cases were 286, 458 and 533 respectively, the ministry's figures show.
The foundation said the increase in young people involved in sexual crimes could be related to the prevalence of explicit sexual content online.
Chi said that the Internet provides youngsters with easy access to a large quantity of sexual information -- including graphic depictions of incest, rape and sadomasochism -- and the impressionable among them may in time consider such acts to be "acceptable."
"In general, young adults in Taiwan who lack sexual education will adopt such online sexual information into their model of interpersonal interaction in reality," she said. "Voyeuristic scenes and amateur pornography provided by Web users are especially popular now in Taiwan," Chi said.
A growing number of young female students have been lured to run away from home by friends they made on the Internet, the foundation said. "These ads appear on Web sites promoting sexually explicit content. Such sites can become venues for the sexual exploitation of underage girls," Chi said.
The End Child Prostitution Association (
The association has been monitoring such Web sites with the help of volunteers and has gathered information regarding 13,000 sites with sexually explicit content.
"We would like to provide information available in our database to the Ministry of Education. The ministry can utilize certain software to censor access to such sites via TAnet," Chi said. TAnet is the Internet service provided free to students and teachers by the ministry for promotion of academic uses of the Internet.
The association has said it will forward the addresses of Web sites featuring underage girls and other illicit content to the police. However, the association says it lacks the hardware to effectively pursue its goals and that over 60 volunteers share just four computers.
Both groups have said police in Taiwan lack human resources to explore illegal sexual information online, and have suggested that parents themselves learn how to surf the Net to help police their children's online habits.
Chi said the government should tackle the issue of illicit online content but that proper policy should be formulated first and then specific government departments nominated to police it.
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