Crimes against Children

Crimes against Children

Introduction

The development of information technologies and communication, especially the Internet, has provided significant changes in the lives of many teenagers, growing up immersed in the informational society, fearlessly exploring the virtual environment to see information, listen to music, access videos, produce material for later publishing, maintaining contacts with acquaintances and complete strangers, navigating the highways with ease. Provided digital natives, enjoy all the possibilities, not realizing that often the desire to see and be seen end up putting yourself in a vulnerable situation.

This same environment, which currently has served as a meeting place and exhibition, is also useful for anonymity and thus favors the conduct of those who, either in the condition of true voyeurs seek only visit the communities, blogs, photo blogs and Orkut to observe; want transfigured into hunters wanting to locate and capture their victims, they become easy prey to the criminal networks, especially those directed to the practice of sexual crimes such as pedophilia.

Discussion

Cyberspace, characterized by its porosity allows information flows and communication across borders increases the vulnerability of teenagers, both can contribute to their own victimization, by how deliberately exposes itself, as can be fooled, maintaining contacts with adults who identify as people of the same age group from fake profiles, created with the deliberate purpose of establishing communication with children and adolescents and, from there, to have access to images, information and data on their intimacy (Hahn & Sarat, 2000).

For many users of new information technologies, cyberspace provides access to information and entertainment, construction of intelligent communities and opportunity for establishing new communication flows, facilitating contact between people spread across various regions of the planet. For others, however, this environment is equivalent to a lawless territory, which would justify all kinds of behavior, since it would be a space apart, ...