More victims of online harm seek help from support centre

Rise in cases partly due to outreach, more awareness over past 2 years, says its COO

- Syarafana Shafeeq

The number of people who sought help from a support centre for being harassed online and having their personal information and images shared on social media platforms almost doubled from 2023 to 2024.

SheCares@SCWO, which helps victims of online harm, saw 32 victims of doxxing in 2024, up from 13 in 2023. For harassment and cyber bullying, the number rose from 48 in 2023 to 80 in 2024. Doxxing refers to one's identity or private information being published online without consent to cause harassment, alarm or distress.

The number of victims who experienced image-based sexual abuse, which refers to the non-consensual sharing of intimate or sexually explicit images or videos, rose from 27 to 46 from 2023 to 2024.

Overall, SheCares@SCWO helped 158 people in 2024, up from 99 in 2023, which was its first year of operations. Half of the victims who reached out experienced multiple online harms at once.

These latest figures were released by SG Her Empowerment (SHE) in a new report on online harms, in conjunction with the organisation's annual symposium on Feb 24.

The event was held at YWCA Fort Canning and attended by women's groups and partners of SHE.

The rise in reported cases of tech-facilitated sexual abuse is also seen at the Association of Women for Action and Research's (Aware) Sexual Assault Care Centre, which supports victims of sexual offences.

In 2023, Aware received 113 cases of sexual violence involving technology. Of these, there was a 19 per cent increase in cases involving image-based sexual abuse compared with 2021.