KUALA LUMPUR, May 3 — On average, one in three children in Malaysia under 18 years old has become a victim of online sexual predators, Utusan Malaysia reported today.

Last year, police recorded a total of 1,464 cases of online sexual harassment cases involving minors compared to 1,272 cases in 2021, the daily reported, citing data from Bukit Aman.

And in the last five years, there have been a total of 5,727 cases of sexual harassment cases involving children through social media.

Assistant Commissioner Siti Kamsiah Hassan who is the principal assistant director of Bukit Aman’s Sexual, Women and Child Investigations Division told the Malay newspaper that physical sexual assault made up the highest number of cases at 4,440.

In second place was non-physical sexual assault with 189 cases, and child pornography access at 67 cases. Other sexual offences involving minors came to 132 cases, the daily reported.

According to Siti Kamsiah, the increase in child sexual crimes in the last five years is due to social media exposure.

"Social media platforms are used as an introductory medium prior to committing sexual offences or the medium is used directly to commit the offence of disseminating child sexual abuse materials or sextortion offences,” she was quoted as saying.

She observed that whether the cases involved physical or non-physical sexual assault of minors, the modus operandi of the suspects have been found to start off the same way – by first approaching the children through social media platforms.

In physical sexual assault cases, she said the sexual predators would lay a honey trap for the children, convincing the child they were in a romantic relationship even before any face-to-face meeting. When they finally meet, the child would be molested or made to have sexual intercourse with the predator.

Siti Kamsiah said that in non-physical sexual assault cases, the suspect would "groom” the child by initiating sexual communication and carry on over a period of time to get the victim’s full trust to the point the victim is willing to take part in sexual activities like posing while naked.

She said the suspect would record all these and later use it to threaten the child victim to continue their sexual communication.

She disclosed that there were recent cases of victims being threatened with exposure of their sexual photographs or videos unless they paid a sum of money to the perpetrators.

"Apart from children, there are also adults who have become victims and fall for the suspect’s sweet talk until they are willing to pose naked and act sexually while communicating with the suspect,” Siti Kamsiah was quoted as saying.

She said a total of 5,966 children have been reported to be sexual reporters in the last five years. The majority are girls numbering 5,115 while boys made up 851.

Siti Kamsiah told Utusan Malaysia that the bulk of children who have been sexually harassed online were those aged between 13 and 15, and numbered 2,167 people.

The next age group affected were those between 10 and 12 years old (1,197); 16 to 18 years (1,146), and six to nine years (983). Those under six years old made up 473) cases.