"Sexting" craze on the rise among children

Aug 4, 2009
By Stefano Ambrogi

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - A growing number of British teenagers are swapping sexually explicit images of themselves on mobile phones leaving them open to bullying and victimization by their peers, police and a children's charity said on Tuesday.

The practice, known as "sexting," has also resulted in intimate images of children being posted on websites used by pedophiles without the knowledge of the sender, according to Britain's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center (CEOP).

"We are getting an increasing number of reports from the public, children and parents alike, who are concerned about this kind of behavior," said Helen Penn, head of education at CEOP, a law enforcement agency tied to the British police. the rest