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When Childnet carried out focus groups with young people in 2013 as part of a project to create cyberbullying guidance for teachers, those taking part spoke of young people being named and shamed online about their sexual behaviour by their peers. What was surprising, according to Childnet's Maithreyi Rajeshkumar, was that when asked what they would do about it, most participants said nothing.
This was the beginning of Project deSHAME, which has sought to define, understand and tackle the sexual harassment of young people online.
The project, which is 80 per cent EU-funded, is a collaboration between the child internet safety charity and the University of Central Lancashire in the UK, with partners in Hungary and Denmark. While previous preventative work relating to sexual behaviour online has focused on "sexting", this project was broader in scope, defining sexual harassment into four main types: non-consensual sharing of intimate images and videos; exploitation, coercion and threats; sexualised bullying; and unwanted sexualisation.
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