A/HRC/12/23 page 11 10 per cent every year.5 Chat rooms have become one of the main means of luring minors into participating in pornographic films, having sexual relations and even of abducting them. Internet users have various strategies for approaching children: seduction, blackmail, etc. 46. In chat rooms sexual predators looking for a child can exploit the anonymity of the chat in order to seduce the child. By posing as adolescents themselves, they persuade the child to continue contact by e-mail. After a few “innocent” conversations, they gain the child’s confidence enough to ask for an e-mail address or mobile phone number with a view to organizing a “real world” meeting. The meeting is the real purpose behind this subterfuge. Others suggest webcam photo sessions which turn out to be pornographic. 47. The effects of Internet child pornography on children are better known: images of child sexual exploitation and the dissemination of those images compound the consequences of the child abuse, affecting the victims’ recovery and the delivery of the services available to them. Images of sexually exploited children disseminated on the Internet will in fact never disappear and this has a devastating effect on victims. The victims do not want to tell; blame themselves; are even more traumatized; are ashamed to think that others might see the images on the Internet; are less likely to provide information; and need more time to recover from the abuse than if the images had not been recorded. Furthermore, many abusers force the victim to pretend that they are enjoying the experience, which is why a victim might fear that the police will believe that they welcomed the abuse. Photographs and videos of sexually exploited children may in some cases appear to contradict the authorities’ perceptions and ideas about child victims of sexual exploitation (as always being victims who were forced to commit such acts). 48. Researchers at ECPAT International also emphasize that “Practitioners report that a child in this situation may feel that the existence of imagery of their humiliation masks the violence they have experienced and makes them appear complicit. This dilemma adds an extra traumatic burden.”6 For some victims the abuse becomes something so normal that their behaviour may become misleading. 49. The constant circulation of images of sexually exploited children exponentially increases the difficulty victims have in turning the page and recovering. Even when the abuse is a thing of the past, victims continue to be traumatized because the images are still in circulation and being used for sexual gratification. That fact is compounded by the fear that something so personal from their past may reappear anywhere, at any time and be seen by anyone. 50. This is a never-ending violation of the right to privacy which causes additional humiliation. Victims grow up knowing that those photographs or videos will be on the Internet for the rest of their lives. 5 ECPAT International: “A contribution to the Third World Congress against Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents”, 2008. 6 ECPAT International, Violence against Children in Cyberspace, Bangkok, 2005, page 40. (http://www.ecpat.net/EI/Publications/ICT/Cyberspace_FRE.pdf).