Need to protect youngsters from online predators
A young lady was last month killed in Nairobi’s South B suburb by some rabid Lothario who seems to have perfected the art of luring hapless victims into his wicked world of venereal fantasies. Within the same month, another macabre murder of a university student was reported in the city’s Roysambu area.
Increased cases of ‘internet homicide’ are worrying. According to Paul Bocj, the author of Cyberstalking: Harassment in the Internet Age and How to Protect Your Family, “the idea that a serial killer may have operated via the internet is, understandably, one that has resulted in a great deal of public anxiety”. The most vulnerable among us are our youngsters.
In the overwhelmingly materialistic world of our time, we shouldn’t hasten to heap blame on impressionable younglings for falling prey to baits offered by wolves in sheep-skins.
Online predators rely on the Mardi Gras Effect – the ability to hide one’s identity on the internet to lure and murder repeatedly. As a rule of thumb, digital and online interactions should be treated with a generous serving suspicion because anonymity is a perfect license to decadent indulgence.
With regard to prosecuting online vultures, a good society has a moral duty to keep a close check on criminals using the internet to harm others.
This should be executed by regularly assessing the amplitude of existing legal frameworks on matters concerning rather mercurial online criminal activities. That is imperative because the age-old wisdom that warned against fraternising with strangers seems to have lost its appeal with the advent of the Internet.
We, therefore, need to ask ourselves two questions: How do we use the law to thwart advances and booby traps set by prowling online predators? Secondly, how best do we enlighten our youth on the hazards heralded by incautious encounters with online spongers?
Let us interrogate the legal end of this matter first. In view of the recent happenings, there is a need to steepen the punishment of online predators. Besides, it may be necessary to set up a special court to deal specifically with online violations in all their hues and vestiges. Domestication of the UN Cybercrime treaty should be a priority for Kenya as well.
Every society must create awareness of the folly of dealing with morally unrestrained individuals posing as friends. To succeed, we need to use all available channels to spotlight the jeopardy portended in dealing with depraved merchants of deceit. Parents should tell their children to be careful online.
The same message should be aired by faith-based organisations and the media. The creation of digital citizens through the digital literacy programmes targeting five million citizens by the government is therefore a timely and necessary intervention.
Kenya’s Digital Superhighway is among the most ambitious digital transformation projects expected to accommodate more millions of young Kenyans into the digital space. This calls for intentional and vigilant protection of the many stainless users of the internet who create genuine opportunities. We must keep degenerates seeking easy online prey at bay, at all cost.
Mr Gikuru is an advocate of the High Court. @GikuruSK
