Online child pornography accounts for more than 3 out of 4 Pa. cyber crime convictions

Computer hacking and election tampering dominate the conversation about cyber crimes, but a new study by the Administrative Office of the Pennsylvania Courts found an even more insidious offense tops the list of criminal convictions for cyber crime: child pornography.

Online child pornography accounted for more than three out of four convictions for cyber crime in Pennsylvania between 2014 and 2018, a survey of court records released Friday revealed. Of some 799 cyber offenses between 2014 and 2018, court officials said 77 percent of the convictions involved online child pornography — pictures or videos showing children being sexually abused or tortured.

The numbers come in the wake of recent reports highlighting the virtual tsunami of child pornography on the web.

A recent New York Times report detailed how technology companies reported that the number of images of child pornography on the web exploded from just over 1 million in 2014 to more than 45 million last year.

Closer to home, the numbers are reflected in a single day’s headlines in the Tribune-Review. On Thursday, Dec. 12, news reports detailed a 24-year-old Unity man’s guilty pleas to state and federal charges for the rape of a child and distribution of photos and videos of child pornography that netted him up to 16 years in prison, and the arrest of an Ohio weatherman accused of accessing nearly 16,000 images of online child pornography.

Crimes involving online child pornography far outweighed other cyber crimes in Pennsylvania’s courts. Unlawful use of a computer and computer trespassing came in a distant second, comprising 21 percent of the convictions for cyber crime.

Researchers found that men outnumbered women by more than four to one when it came to cyber offenses. About 82 percent of all defendants in such cases were men; 18 percent were women.