CHILDREN are using mobile phones to film each other having sex and are then sending the images to classmates.

Experts say the trend is growing and draw comparisons to the “happy slapping” craze in which children use mobile phone cameras to film assaults on members of the public.

Two weeks ago a 13-year-old boy was caught with footage on his mobile phone of two fellow pupils aged 15 having sex near their school in Warwickshire.

In another case last summer a 16-year-old boy used his mobile phone to film a 14-year-old girl having sex in a bedroom at a house party in Perth and sent the images to his school friends.

Some blame the trend on the ease with which children can access pornography on the internet or mobiles, so they become desensitised to images normally regarded as shocking.

Andrew Durham, a consultant practitioner at the Sexualised Inappropriate Behaviours Service, which deals with children’s sexual problems, said: “It is now a feature within young people’s culture that these incidences get filmed. It is similar to the way people use phones to film others being assaulted.”

The service, a council programme in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, has treated a dozen cases in the past year involving children where sex acts were videoed on mobile phones or sexual behaviour was copied from images on the internet.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) has begun an assessment with Cork University to establish the scale of the problem. Kevin Gibbs, co-chairman of the NSPCC’s sexually harmful behaviour group, said the work would analyse data from 22 of its centres in Britain.

“All of our services have come across some examples where pornographic and adult images have been passed round on mobile phones or images taken of people in embarrassing sexual situations,” he said. “Once images are passed on to their friends it can go into a spiral where they have no control or say over who looks at it.”

According to recent research, 90% of children aged 10-19 in Britain own a mobile phone. As well as a camera, many have internet access that allows pornography to be downloaded and swapped between phones.

Experts believe many children are unaware that sending pornographic images can fall foul of the law.

Last month, in one of the first such court cases, Callum McKinley, 16, admitted passing on video footage of a friend having sex with an underage girl.

Perth sheriff court was told McKinley used his phone to film a classmate having sex with a 14-year-old girl at a party last May. The girl complained to police when the clips were passed around the school. McKinley, a former under-16 schoolboy international, escaped punishment so he could pursue his football career.

In London, two boys were arrested for allegedly raping an 11-year-old girl after footage of the alleged assault was filmed on a mobile phone and discovered. The boys were charged, but the case never went to court.

Gill Mullinar, co-ordinator of the Sex Education Forum, part of the National Children’s Bureau, said children were computer literate at a young age, increasing the risk they would see graphic images they did not understand.

“What young people consistently tell us is they get too little sex education too late and it’s only about the biology of sex rather than the nature of relationships,” she said.

Web porn booms

- According to a poll last year, 40% of British men had visited pornographic websites in the previous 12 months, a quadrupling of the rate since 2000

- Women were found to be the fastest growing users, with female visitors to porn sites rising 30% last year

- As the use of internet porn has boomed, so have convictions for child pornography offences, which are running at more than 2,200 a year, compared with just 35 in 1998

- According to one survey, using internet porn has been cited by 40% of couples suffering relationship problems

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