Gyeonggi-do Supports 367 Victims of Digital Sex Crimes

[Asia Economy (Suwon) = Reporter Lee Young-gyu] It has been revealed that Gyeonggi Province provided psychological counseling and other support to 367 victims of digital sex crimes last year.

Gyeonggi Province announced on the 22nd that through the 'Gyeonggi Province Digital Sex Crime Victim One-Stop Support Center,' a dedicated institution supporting victims of digital sex crimes, it provided a total of 11,156 services including professional psychological counseling, video deletion, and legal support to 367 victims last year.

The Gyeonggi Province Digital Sex Crime Victim One-Stop Support Center is an institution entrusted by Gyeonggi Province to the Gyeonggi Women's Family Foundation. It offers comprehensive services such as support for deleting victim videos distributed on the internet, legal support for victim protection, investigation linkage and safe support accompaniment, and psychological support linkage.

Looking at the gender of the victims supported by the center last year, there were 295 women (80.4%), 60 men (16.3%), and 12 unknown (3.3%).

By age group, teenagers accounted for the largest number with 161 victims (43.9%), followed by those in their 20s with 81 (22.1%), 30s with 33 (9%), 40s with 23 (6.3%), and 50s with 18 (4.9%).

The center carried out 8,819 deletion support cases (79.1%), 2,224 counseling support cases (19.9%), 60 cases of professional psychological counseling and other linkages (0.5%), 31 cases of safe support accompaniment and investigation linkage (0.3%), and 22 cases of legal support (0.2%).

Regarding the types of victimization (multiple responses possible) based on counseling results, anxiety about distribution (anxiety due to the fact of filming although the distribution details are unknown) was the most common with 246 cases (31.7%).

Next were ▲illegal filming with 131 cases (16.9%) ▲distribution and redistribution with 110 cases (14.2%) ▲cyberbullying with 73 cases (9.4%) ▲distribution threats with 62 cases (8%) ▲online grooming (a crime where trust is built through chat apps, etc., and weaknesses are exploited) with 46 cases (5.9%).

As for the types of perpetrators, 125 victims (34.1%) were involved with temporary relationships met online or once, 92 (25.1%) with social relationships met at school or work, 62 (16.9%) with intimate relationships such as ex-spouses and ex-lovers, and 53 cases (14.4%) involved strangers.

Looking at deletion support status by platform, adult sites accounted for 1,659 cases (67.5%), others 478 cases (19.4%), search engines 214 cases (8.7%), social media 102 cases (4.1%), and P2P (peer-to-peer file sharing) 6 cases (0.2%).

When the center confirms the distribution of victim videos, it requests deletion from the site administrators and monitors whether action is taken. If distribution is not confirmed, it directly supports 'distribution status monitoring.'

In addition, to prevent digital sex crimes, the center conducted 41 prevention education sessions for 602 workers from women's violence-related institutions and elementary, middle, and high school teachers in the province. It also formed a 30-member citizen response monitoring group to monitor inappropriate posts on portal sites and SNS (social networking services), reporting a total of 9,641 cases, thereby strengthening digital sex crime response capabilities.

Ji Ju-yeon, Director of the Women's and Family Bureau of the province, emphasized, "The operation of the Gyeonggi Province Digital Sex Crime Victim One-Stop Support Center recognizes the seriousness of digital sex crimes at the provincial level and is the first metropolitan local government to establish a comprehensive victim support system. We will do our best to create a society safe from digital sex crimes through the center."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.