INCREASING numbers of children are falling victim to cyber bullies, who have adopted the internet as their preferred weapon of humiliation and abuse.

Police experts and children’s charities are concerned at the increase of cyber-bullying, which is estimated to have risen by at least 30 per cent over the past two years.

E-mail, text messages and website chat rooms are the new forums for threatening children by stealth, out of sight of parents and teachers, around the clock.

Bullying claims the lives of around 20 teenagers a year and thousands more suffer physical and psychological torment. Charities are voicing concern that this new phenomenon is “growing like wildfire”.

In 2001, mobile telephones were among the most popular Christmas presents for children. Since then, cyber-bullying has risen by at least 30 per cent, Kidscape, a leading children’s charity, says.

Yet as teachers crack down on abuse in the classroom, police admit that cyber bullies can be harder to identify and quash than their traditional counterparts.

In May Mouth2Mouth.tk turned from an innocent internet forum for local children in Hemel Hempstead to chat into a vicious gallery of hatred and abuse. Within months, one humiliated teenager had tried to kill herself and another had lost all his friends after abusive messages were given out in his name.

Parents and anxious teenagers contacted Liz Carnell, who runs Bullying Online at www.bullying.co.uk, a charity set up to counter cyber abuse.

“It was appalling. There were death threats, racist messages and threats of violence. So I spent an entire weekend answering all the messages and telling the abusers the damage they were doing,” she said.

Cyber bullying began, Ms Carnell believes, after children were given mobile phones for Christmas in 2001. Initially, they made silent phone calls, but since then the abuse has transferred increasingly to public humiliation on the internet.

“We have seen an enormous growth in websites targeting individuals. In the last month we have shut down at least four sites in North London alone,” Ms Carnell said. As the mother of a son who was bullied at school, she knows the pain suffered by the child and the parents.

Making repeated offensive remarks on websites can be a criminal offence. Perpetrators may be found either to be breaking the Harassment Act 1997 or the Telecommmunications Act 1984. Mouth2Mouth.tk has since been closed down. The “hosts” who set it up never intended it to become a vehicle of hate, but soon lost control, Detective Inspector Mike Hanlon said.

“The website was set up with the best of intentions by two responsible youths, but it grew beyond their expectations and they weren’t able to manage it,” he said.

Another, very similar site has taken its place.

Childline received 22,000 calls from children complaining of bullying last year. In a survey of 1,000 children for the Department for Education and Skills, more than two thirds said that they had witnessed bullying, including name-calling, punching, kicking and text-messaging.

This week, a funeral service was held for Laura Rhodes, 13, from Neath, South Wales, who committed suicide after a sustained campaign of school bullying. Marcus Andrews, 11, was the victim of a vicious attack in the school corridors of Wetherby High School, in West Yorkshire. Children pounced on him, broke his arm and photographed his agony with their mobile phones before e-mailing the pictures to friends.

Michele Elliott, director of Kidscape, calculates that at least 12 calls of the calls they receive in a given week are about text-message and internet bullying.

“It’s growing like wildfire,” she said. “Probably half of those who come on our bullying courses are complaining of cyber bullying,” Inspector Hanlon said.

“Obviously bullying breaches the Harassment Act, but it is not the (internet) providers who are the bullies, but those using the site and tracing them is the difficulty. From a police point of view it is far more effective to close it down because it can be difficult and almost impossible to find the perpetrators.”

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