Ahead of European Safer Internet Day (which falls on the 1st Tuesday of February each year), the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) released a press notice regarding the latest trends in child sexual exploitation online. One of the major stories that was highlighted by the press release, was the published literature review written by Helen Whittle (School of Psychology PhD student and CEOP employee), Catherine Hamilton-Giachritsis and Anthony Beech (School of Psychology).
The literature review was titled 'A review of young people's vulnerabilities to online grooming', and identified what factors may make a young person vulnerable to being groomed online. CEOP received much local and national press coverage (TV, radio, print and online) on Monday 4th February and the findings from this review were highlighted by many of the reports, including the front page of the Metro newspaper. The BBC featured an article on their website titled 'Ceop warns over 'alarming new trend' in online sex abuse' which linked directly to the University of Birmingham and CEOP literature review.
This press coverage has helped to highlight the current issues and support the continuing work in this area, to better protect young people online.