KUALA LUMPUR: Children found producing and selling sexually explicit material online should not automatically be viewed solely as offenders, as they may themselves have been exposed to grooming, coercion or previous abuse, say child protection advocates.
Consultant paediatrician and child-disability advocate Datuk Dr Amar Singh-HSS said authorities and parents needed to first understand what led a child to become involved, including the child’s developmental understanding and any pressure or manipulation.
“Children involved could simultaneously be a victim and possess the capacity to make choices that harm others,” he said in an interview yesterday.
He said even when a teenager claimed to have acted independently for money, closer investigation could uncover manipulation by adults or older peers who orchestrated sales or dictated the content.
“There may be ‘trauma bonding’ where a child is groomed into believing that producing content is an expression of affection, masking underlying sexual exploitation,” he said.
Previous exposure to sexual abuse could also distort a child’s understanding of boundaries, he added.
Dr Amar’s comments followed the latest Ops Pedo 3.0 findings, in which police said some of the minors detained had allegedly moved beyond consuming child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to producing anime-style sexual content and selling it online.
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He said child protection responses should instead establish what happened before the child became involved and what intervention was needed.
“What actually happened for this to occur? What was the child’s role and developmental understanding? What pressures or manipulation were present?”
He called for a trauma-informed, child- and victim-centred approach that prioritised protection and therapeutic intervention.
Child advocate Datuk Dr Hartini Zainudin said children were often gradually drawn into harmful online communities rather than making a sudden decision to produce sexual content.
“There is almost always a path: early exposure, someone older who normalises it, a group that rewards them with attention, belonging or money, and then a slow shift from watching to taking part,” she said.
She said animated or drawn material could also appear less harmful to children because “no real person is involved”, potentially lowering their guard.
“It is still sexualised material of children; it is still used to groom, and it still feeds demand,” she said.
Hartini said earning money from such material could make it harder for children to leave, particularly those who were lonely, struggling at home or financially stressed.
She called for diversion, counselling, child-friendly justice processes and psychosocial support for affected children.
“If our response is shame and punishment, they will go quiet, and the adults behind these networks stay protected,” she said.
