Serious Incident Management
The dark side of the net
Child exploitation in all its guises is the horrific, ugly side of the net. While you may never come across such cases, all professionals working with children need to be alert to this possibility.
In 2013 the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) saw a 31 per cent increase in reports processed compared to 2012. It identified 13,182 webpages containing child sexual abuse imagery from 51,186 reports.
Of the 13,182 webpages:
•Over half (51%) showed the rape or sexual torture of a child or children.
•Over 80 per cent were of victims aged 10 or under.
•The vast majority of the victims were girls (76%). Ten per cent were boys and 9 per cent showed both genders.
•Twenty-four per cent of the images and videos were being sold on a commercial basis.
Most of the images and videos were hosted in North America (54%) with 43 per cent hosted in Europe (including Russia).
The UK still leads the world at removing this criminal imagery; less than 1 per cent of all the child sexual abuse images and videos identified were hosted in the UK. However, due to a rise in the number of UK businesses’ websites hacked to host folders of child sexual abuse images, the number of UK-hosted images increased [between 2012 and 2013].23
What should you do if you suspect that a child has been or is being sexually exploited online?
•Make the child safe.
•Save any evidence.
•Put the device out of use if relevant.
•Contact your safeguarding lead, who will contact CEOP and the local authority designated officer and children’s social care if required.
•Notify the Internet Watch Foundation.
Staff may understandably be very upset by a case of this nature and will need support and debriefing. They should follow the school’s serious incident protocols.
Local figures from the Cybersurvey in England
In 2014, there were 660 people aged 10–11 in the cyber survey:
•seventy-one per cent use a smartphone
•fifty-three per cent use social networking sites, mainly Facebook
•fifty-six per cent use a laptop or a netbook
•seventy-six per cent use tablets
•nineteen per cent have been cyberbullied.
Online risk
Around 20 per cent report issues of concern: One in five have been cyberbullied, seen websites urging you to be too thin, or seen sites urging people to hurt or kill yourself and been involved in sexting.
One in four have come across pictures of nudity or violence they did not search for and 14 per cent have been in touch with someone who pretended to be a young person interested in them but who subsequently turned out to be someone quite different.
Nearly a third say they have come across websites giving dangerous advice. 22 young people say they have been tricked into buying fake goods and 29 have been tricked into paying for something online that they did not want.
How to capture and preserve evidence
It is important to capture evidence of cyberbullying before the perpetrator alters or takes it down. Cyberbullying on social networks can be deleted by a pupil or member of staff when it gets out that you are investigating and then the evidence is lost. Or a perpetrator might use a live chat service where the dialogue is not saved or a self-destruct service where a message disappears after a few seconds. An offensive photo can be altered to look better or be taken down once the case is being investigated. In all cases of bullying, evidence is that vital component that proves what the victim alleges. Even to get something taken down or to report it to a website, the victim may have to produce the evidence. Bullying may intensify, in which case having evidence of how long it has gone on will be helpful. So how can this be achieved? Of course you can print out any emails, but few young people use email today. Here are some ideas.
Capture a screenshot or screengrab on a computer
A screenshot is essentially a photo of what you can see on your computer screen. It captures everything just as it looks in the original context such as a Facebook page or full email. This has more credibility than if only the message is copied and pasted.
Google screengrab instructions for your particular device or operating system. The following are useful links for how to take a screenshot: http://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201361 (Mac), http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-xp/help/setup/take-a-screen-shot (Windows) and www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r66JM5iL2M (iPad).
Storing the image
Once you have the screenshot on the screen in Paint, you need to save it as an image. To do this:
•Click on the ‘File’ button followed by the ‘Save as’ button. This will open a list of folders on your computer and there should be one named ‘Pictures’ or ‘My Pictures’.
•Click on the folder to open it. The screen will ask you for a name to save the file as and will also ask for the file type. Choose JPEG. Type in a name for the image such as ‘Cyberevidence1’ and label subsequent ones as ‘Cyberevidence2’, ‘Cyberevidence3’ and so on.
•It might help to open a subfolder inside your My Pictures file called ‘Evidence’. Do this by opening ‘Pictures’, right-clicking the mouse and clicking on ‘New’ and then ‘Folder’. A folder icon will appear and you can type in the name you want to give it.
•Select ‘JPEG’ as the file format.
•You can also do this using Microsoft Publisher if you prefer – simply paste the screenshot into a Publisher blank page and go to ‘Save as’ – where you select a name and type as above.
Finding the stored screenshot
When you need your evidence, you will easily find it by looking in ‘My Pictures’ and then in the ‘Evidence’ folder. The images can then be printed, emailed or saved onto your camera’s SD card.
It can help to create a timeline or diary, noting the date each time there is another incident.
Emailing the screenshot
You might be required to send your screenshots to the police, lawyers or other people who are involved in your case such as a designated safeguarding lead or the service provider.
•Open the saved ‘Evidence’ folder and decide which images you want to send by email.
•If your email goes through Outlook Express, select the images by holding down the ‘Control’ key and clicking on them. The computer will highlight them for you.
•Right-click on one of the pictures and a list of options will appear. Select ‘Send to’ and the computer will open a new email with the pictures attached. All you need to do is type in the email address you want to send them to.
•If using Outlook Express, Gmail or Hotmail, open a new email. Find the ‘Attach’ or ‘Insert a file’ command, then click on it. It will open a list of folders. Find your ‘Pictures’ folder and inside it will be your ‘Evidence’ folder. Once you open it you can select which pieces of evidence you want to attach to your email. Hold down the ‘Control’ key and click on the images you wish to send.
Note: In cases which involve nude or explicit images of young people under 18 it is not advisable to look at them nor to download any on to your own devices. Lock the device into a drawer until the designated person within your school or the police are able to look at it. Ask the victim to save the evidence first.
On mobiles and tablets
Capture the evidence
The victim can place the phone onto a photocopier or take a photo with another phone. Screenshots can be saved. You can also take a photo of a computer or tablet screen with a phone.
Preserve the evidence
It is advisable to keep a record of the abusive or aggressive incident. Note down the date and time, the content of the message(s) and, where possible, a sender’s ID (e.g. username, email address, mobile phone number) or the web address of the SNS page or the content. Even better, keep an accurate copy of the whole web-page address, as this will help the service provider find the content you wish to complain about.
Keeping the evidence will help in any investigation into the cyberbullying by the service provider, but it can also be useful in showing what has happened to those who may need to know, including parents, teachers, pastoral care staff and the police.
How to preserve the evidence
It is always useful to keep a written record, but it is better to save evidence of bullying on the device itself:
•With mobiles, ask the young person being bullied to keep or save any messages, whether voice, image or text. Do not have them forward the message to your staff phone. This could cause vital information from the original message to be lost. The following are useful links for how to take a screenshot: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/screen-capture-smartphone.htm (smartphone) and http://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT200289 (iPhone). There are also apps available which can be used to take screenshots. See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.longxk.ascreenshot&hl=en.
•On instant messaging generally, some services allow the user to record all conversations. The user can also copy and paste, save and print these. If you think about it, it is obvious that if evidence is kept via a copy-and-paste method it might appear less genuine, as it could have been altered. This is why, when reporting a case to the service provider or the police, authentic evidence made from saved evidence is more convincing, so conversations recorded or archived by the instant messaging service are better for evidence here. Conversations can also be printed out in hard copy or sections can be saved as a screen grab.
•On SNS, video-hosting sites or other websites, copy and save the site link, print the page or take a screen grab of the page and save it. You can also take a photo of the entire screen using a mobile. Aim for a high-resolution image.
•Some versions of Messenger offer the option to archive conversations. Check your Messenger toolbar for your preferences and privacy options and switch on the archive setting.
•Where this option is not available, either copy and save the conversation or use one of the ideas above such as a photo or a screengrab.
•For chat rooms, print the page or produce a screen grab of the page.
•On email, ask the person being bullied to print it; forward the message to the staff member investigating the incident and encourage them to continue to forward and save any subsequent messages. Preserving the whole message, and not just the text, is more useful as this will contain ‘headers’ (information about where the message has come from). They can also print out the emails and keep a folder.
A note about images
If images are involved in cyberbullying, it is important to find out if they might be illegal or raise child protection concerns. Indecent or sexual images of children (people under the age of 18) are illegal to produce, circulate or possess in the UK. These include images that children have taken of themselves or their friends, using their mobile phone for example.
In cases which involve nude or explicit images of young people under 18 it is advisable not to look at or download them onto your own devices. Lock the device in a drawer until the designated safeguarding lead in your school or the police are able to look at it. Ask the victim to save the evidence first.
Contact the Internet Watch Foundation if the images are Internet content or the local police if illegal images have been taken of a child and circulated. Similarly, if the case involves an assault on another young person or some other crime, contact the local police. If it is a safeguarding matter, trigger your school’s safeguarding procedures. If the case involves child sexual exploitation, contact CEOP.
Less serious situations
If the case involves images that are not illegal or taken of an illegal act, you may prefer to try to contain the incident within the school. Some cases benefit from the utmost discretion and it is not always necessary to tell the whole school about the case. However, cases should trigger useful work across a year group – for example, to counter any prejudice that has emerged or to teach them a new aspect of staying safe. Cases may trigger letters home to parents about particular sites or warnings about new behaviours that are coming to light.
In cases where you do not know the identity of the bully, we can often find out the IP address24 of the device used, but it is wise to remember that someone else might have used that device, even using someone’s identity or SNS account. Many young people do lots of social networking with friends who can memorise their password, or someone may know that their friend’s phone is always linked to their Facebook page so they could use it when their friend goes out of the room for a moment. Siblings often know or can guess the password their brother or sister is using. Evidence of an IP address is just that; nothing more is proven.
But there may be witnesses who visited that page, school logs and service provider data. The police would have to request an action from a service provider if it involved someone else. If the bullying person withheld their number then the date and time of the call or message should help the provider identify the caller to the police.
Schools can often have a number identified because they have a list of students’ mobile numbers or other pupils can recognise the number. But there are situations in which it is more difficult. When phones are using local wi-fi to communicate, the call is not processed by the provider’s network. Texts sent from a website to a phone are also difficult to trace.
Where a crime has been committed and reported to the police, the police have protocols for working with service providers if they wish to request information.
Investigating allegations against staff
Allegations against staff are a safeguarding and possibly child protection matter. Devices should be put out of use and safely stored. All evidence should be saved.
Parents
We also see cases where parents or pupils attack staff members online. Parents should use the school’s complaints procedure rather than go online and encourage other parents to comment on or defame a teacher. Staff can gain advice from their union or the professionals’ helpline. The behaviour may involve defamation or damage to a teacher’s professional reputation. Governing bodies should invite parent instigators to a meeting in the first instance, and written notes should be taken.
Figure 6.1 If pupils perpetrate inappropriate actions against staff
What should an Acceptable Use of ICT policy cover?
•School name: It also needs to state who is responsible for the policy – for example, a named staff member and a designated governor; and the date it was last reviewed and the next planned review date.
•Who does this policy apply to? Our policy applies to all students, staff, governors and volunteers associated with the school.
•What does the policy relate to? The use of ICT in all forms, current and emerging. It is part of the school development plan and relates to other policies including those for behaviour, anti-bullying, safeguarding and child protection. It has been written by the school and approved by staff and governors with pupils’ participation. It works in conjunction with the school’s e-safety policy.
•Our vision: We want every member of the school community to be using the opportunities offered by digital technology safely. Everyone has a right to be free of bullying and discrimination, exploitation and harassment.
•Our objectives: To inform every member of the school community about how they can be safe on the Internet and when using mobile phones and hand-held devices; to set up clear boundaries and agreement on the Acceptable Use of ICT, the school’s systems and those used by every individual, both staff and pupils; and to make staff, pupils, parents and governors our partners in the delivery of an e-safe school.
•The five main areas of the policy: current digital technologies; teaching and learning; e-safety risks; strategies to minimise risks; and how complaints about e-safety will be handled. There are often two agreements: one for staff and another for pupils.
°Current digital technologies: ICT in the 21st century has an enabling, creative and essential role in the lives of children and adults. New technologies are rapidly enhancing communication and the sharing of information, images, music and film. We want our students and staff to benefit from the opportunities this represents but we acknowledge there are risks. Current and emerging technologies used in school and outside school include: the Internet accessed by a wide and growing range of devices; intranets and virtual learning environments (VLEs – e.g. Moodle); mobile phone texts, messaging, email, apps, cameras and video; instant messaging services; social networking sites; video-sharing sites; chat rooms, webcams, blogs and podcasting; Twitter; gaming; image-sharing sites; virtual worlds; and music and film downloading sites.
°Teaching and learning: The Internet is an essential tool for learning in 21st century life and is integral to education, work and social life; the school has a duty to provide pupils with quality Internet access as part of their learning experience; Internet use is part of the statutory curriculum and a necessary tool for staff and students; the school infrastructure will be designed specifically for pupils’ use and will include safety features and filters that are up to date and well monitored; pupils will be given clear guidance on acceptable behaviour, use of ICT and how to stay safe; pupils will be taught how to search for information safely and effectively and to cross check information to ensure accuracy; pupils will be taught how to publish and present information to a wide audience; pupils will be shown how to evaluate content and respect other people’s ownership rights; pupils will be taught to be responsible digital citizens and respect others; and pupils will be taught how to report abusive or offensive content.
Our pupils will be partners in carrying out this policy and they will be consulted regularly on its use. They are asked to sign up to our agreement on Acceptable Use of ICT as a condition of use.
°E-safety risks include: content – exposure to inappropriate material for their age and stage, inaccurate and misleading information, socially unacceptable material such as inciting violence or hatred or urging unsafe behaviour, and coercive websites such as those promoting anorexia or self-harm; contact – grooming, harassment or stalking, or unwanted contact of any kind; e-commerce – spam and phishing emails, exposure to advertising that is not suitable for children, e.g. online gambling, and pressurised and hidden selling such as free apps or games that have hidden costs; conduct – cyberbullying, cyber-aggression or abuse, child sexual exploitation, rumour spreading, unwanted image sharing, illegal downloading of music and films, and plagiarism.
°General strategies to minimise e-safety risks: all students and parents will sign the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for ICT; staff will receive training in effective strategies and how to respond to incidents; parents and pupils will be asked for consent before photographs are used on school websites; parents will be sent regular briefings on e-safety; pupils will receive e-safety education embedded in the curriculum; e-safety advice will be displayed throughout the school; all pupils will log in through a screen which asks for acceptance of this policy; filtering systems will be in place and will be regularly updated, although smartphones, games consoles and other devices can bypass the school’s system and access the Internet directly – this represents a risk for the management of content; good infrastructure will be in place and regularly reviewed; staff will use safe searches and vet video clips before showing them to pupils; and mobile phone use within school is limited to certain times and lessons.
As we develop the use of devices such as tablets for learning, we reserve the right to amend this policy and we will undertake regular pupil surveys to consult with them.
All staff sign to show they have read and accepted the terms of this policy.
°E-safety concerns: child protection concerns should be reported to the designated safeguarding lead. The school will take steps to protect data and keep personal information about pupils private and securely encrypted; no data will be permitted to leave the school site unless encrypted; pupils’ names will not be used with any photograph on the school’s websites; pictures and work will only be shown where consent has been given by parents; parents will be clearly informed of the policy on taking and posting photographs; the use of social networking sites in school or for school use will not be allowed unless by agreement with all parties; pupils will be taught never to give personal details online, and will be encouraged to use moderated SNS sites and to use avatars or nicknames on SNS; no member of staff will contact any pupil on matters of a personal nature, using mobile phone, messaging or any other form of direct contact, unless it is expressly agreed by senior management or the pupil is a member of their direct family; webcams will not be used unless specific reasons demand it and consent is sought; and sending abusive or aggressive messages, jokes, images or videos is unacceptable, and any incidents must be reported to staff who are trained to support students.
°Liability: Due to the global scale and linked nature of Internet content, the wide availability of mobile and digital technologies and speed of change, it is not possible to guarantee that no unsuitable material will ever appear on a school computer or mobile device. Neither the school nor the Local Authority can accept liability for material accessed, or any consequences of Internet access. The school is not responsible for students under the age of 13 who access Social Networking Sites against their advice.
°Staff School Computer and Internet Acceptable Use Policy: All staff having access to the networks must sign a copy of this Computer and Internet Acceptable Use Policy and return it to the Senior Administrator.
°Checklists: Teachers and children must complete these to show that they have understood the terms of the policy.
°User signature: This acts as confirmation that the user has agreed to the terms of the policy.
Harmful or inappropriate sexual behaviours
Harmful sexual behaviour includes children:
•using sexually explicit words and phrases
•using inappropriate touching
•using sexual violence or threats
•having full or attempted penetrative sex with other children or adults.
Children and young people who develop harmful sexual behaviour harm themselves and others.25
Child sexual behaviour can range from normal to inappropriate, problematic, abusive and violent.26
Young people with learning difficulties who exhibit harmful sexual behaviours are a particularly vulnerable and neglected group. They may require intensive and targeted intervention responses accompanied by extra e-safety education and support that is tailored to their learning ability. Research shows that they experience high rates of victimisation and trauma and are typically described as having a number of social skills deficits, a lack of sexual knowledge and understanding of relationships and high levels of social anxiety. Their family background may be violent, interrupted, unstable or problematic. This combination can lead them to problems in establishing appropriate intimate relationships and sometimes to attempt abusive sexual interactions with children. Below are some of the factors to be taken into consideration when assessing them for external support you may need to seek:
•early onset of concerning behaviour
•behaviour that is potentially or actually harmful to others
•behaviour that is potentially or actually harmful to self
•learning difficulties
•has suffered victimisation
•other behavioural difficulties
•personality characteristics that make friendships/relationships difficult
•family support
•e-safety concerns
•consideration of whether this behaviour is part of a generally antisocial set of behaviours/aggression.
The victims of harmful sexual behaviour should be supported and made safe according to the safeguarding or child protection policy of your school.
AIM
AIM is:
a UK-derived initial assessment tool for young people with harmful sexual behaviours that can be used across professional systems and between local and regional safeguarding bodies. AIM, and its more recent AIM2 iteration, offer a clinically adjusted actuarial model of assessment, which takes empirically supported factors and adds in those factors which are clinically supported by practitioners. Combining static and dynamic factors, the model builds in the use of guided clinical judgement across four key domains:
•sexual and non-sexual harmful behaviours
•developmental factors
•family
•environment.
In each of the key domains, both strengths and concerns are addressed.27
