Just a few weeks after the story about three Facebook pages in Malayalam – all of which had existed simply to attract paedophiles – two more such pages have been shut down, this time in Tamil.
One Facebook page “Chinna ponnu veriyargal” (Crazy about small girls) has a number of pictures of young girls, all fully-clothed, posing for the camera. However, the pictures themselves have mostly likely been used without permission and they are all accompanied by lewd statuses such as “Enna pannalam” (which roughly translates to ‘What can we do with her’).
The page itself had 3,395 likes with comments that talk about the young girls in a sexual manner. The admin went one step further, asking users to inbox more pictures that could be used on the page.
The other Facebook page “Chinna ponna Karpazhipm” (We will rape young children/girls), on the other hand, has pictures of slightly older girls asking users to explicitly explain what they wanted to do with them.
One post accompanying the picture of a girl even goes as far as asking how many people were interested in ‘gang-rape’.
Both the Facebook pages have been widely shared on social media, with users calling for Facebook to bring them down.
What is Facebook’s Role?
Facebook has strict laws against nudity and pictures displaying sexual intercourse. A detailed look shows that none of these pages break the “Facebook law” as there was no nudity.
It is however surprising that Facebook’s algorithm did not locate these pages earlier as people have posted nude pictures in the comments section.
One thing is clear; these pages exist for the sole purpose of acting as a meeting point for people who are interested in children sexually. Some of these pages have been in existence for more than a year.
Since these pages have been maintained only for this purpose, Facebook should have some responsibility of monitoring or tracking such pages.
– Vakul Sharma, Supreme Court lawyer
The bottomline, as we’ve been constantly reiterating in our stories on sexual abuse, is to first accept that it happens – and that it happens to our children at an alarming rate. It is up to us to devise every means possible to protect them from the threat.
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