Dubai: Incidents of virtual infidelity and indecent behaviour are rising alarmingly in the UAE, threatening to tear apart the fabric of social and family life.
Impaired belief systems, a high number of internet users - 66.6 per cent - and devious ways to circumvent filters are fostering a sickening trend of social and sexual behaviour with the anonymity that the cyber world offers making them more uninhibited, leading psychologists have told XPRESS.
Case studies available with them are shocking: a 32-year-old woman chatting with several men by exposing herself in the nude for hours; a 40-plus housewife and mother of three intimately communicating with a UK-based man through a web camera; a man in his 30s not consummating his marriage for three years, but is an exhibitionist on the Net; a 40-plus woman discovering after 20 years of marriage that her husband has virtual relationships with other men; a man watching pornographic films while his wife and children are in the house; and a group of teenagers being threatened by a paedophile that he'd post their nude pictures on the internet.
Shocking statistics
"Around 40 per cent of cyber sex addicts are married women," said Dr R. McCarthy of the private Counselling & Development Clinic in Dubai, who sees at least three such cases every week. Teenagers are also said to be a vulnerable group.
Cyber sex — defined as a consensual online sexual discussion for the purpose of achieving arousal — often begins with casual browsing of pornographic material and gradually advances into more engaging activities like seeking friends, chatting, flirting and dating — all of which occur in the UAE despite stringent controls, sources said.
Under the federal Cyber-Crime Law No 2 (2006), those convicted of stimulating a male or female to commit adultery or prostitution via the internet or transcending family principles and values or using the internet for threatening or blackmailing another person to incite him to commit lewd acts can be sentenced to imprisonment of up to 10 years and fines of up to Dh50,000.
In March 2009, a government committee was established to ensure that internet connections do not bypass filtering regimes set up by etisalat and du as per regulations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRA).
The following month, an online surveillance team set up by Dubai Police tracked down some women who promoted sex services and publicised their Dubai phone numbers online. The team also cracked down on people offering illegal VoIP services from their apartments.
Explicit messages
Just two months back, Dubai Police arrested an online stalker who sent explicit messages to a UK businesswoman on Facebook. The man was picked up from a city hotel where the woman had set him up for a meeting.
Captain Rashid Ahmad Lootah, Director of Cyber-Forensic Evidences, Dubai Police has urged victims to report any abuse on social networking sites so that prompt action can be taken.
In order to build a secure and safe cyber culture in the UAE, TRA has even set up a proactive Computer Emergency Response Team (aeCERT). "The dangers that exist on the internet are not only to information security but could also affect children's development, morals and self-esteem.
Cyber-bullying is just one of the issues the youth today face with little recourse and ways of remediation," said the team in its national security awareness campaign. Parents and teachers should be more actively involved in what their children are doing online and tackle the significant "social risks" that they face, it said.
Dr Shujaat Ali Nathani, psychiatrist with Health Call clinic at Dubai Healthcare City, has dealt with nine cases of online abuse involving men and teenage boys since January this year.
"Raging hormones, lack of parental supervision, peer pressure and easy access" make teenagers prone to explore dubious websites," he said. However, he said the percentage of those with compulsive sexual behaviour is small compared to those indulging in indecent behaviour owing to curiosity, boredom or for the fun of it.
According to Dr McCarthy, the majority of cyber sex cases, like self-satisfaction, are confined to the first level or Type 1 of all sex addictions where the law is not involved and there are no actual victims.
It advances into Type 2 when there is voyeurism and exhibitionism, with a victim being identified and the law coming into force. Similarly, Type 3 and Type 4 are stages when the damage is more severe when the victims are raped/molested or killed.
She said the cycle of a cyber sex addict involves preoccupation and ritualisation before the sexual behaviour becomes compulsive and leads to despair. "Much of the problem stems from an impaired belief system where the individual has low self-esteem," she said.
She said vulnerable youngsters looking for attention are often lured by strangers who gradually win over their confidence.
"From lines like ‘I am here to listen to you" to ‘OK, let's change the subject, what is the colour of your shirt" to ‘What is the colour of your underwear', the communication gets more and more intimate," she said.
Similarly, married women with relationship problems look for emotional support when they chat with strangers, she said. The problem is diagnosed incidentally as it manifests itself in impaired communication, poor or no sexual relations between couples.
No support group
"Unfortunately, we do not have any support groups for sex addicts," she lamented.
"Yes, there is a lot of sexual perversion as such people lack support. With the subject being taboo, they only visit individual psychologists and psychiatrists for help," said Dr Nathani.
He said chances of a cure are good when a patient is internally motivated to be treated. "If treatment is externally forced, the chances of recovery are slimmer," he added.
Dr McCarthy spoke of how a Dubai-based man in his early 40s, who has been a sex addict since his university days, often sent his wife out of the house so he could have sex conversations with women on the Net. But with treatment, he had visited the Net only twice in the last two months.
Dr Rima Sabban, a well-known sociologist in Dubai, said, "We need more research in this area as society and lifestyles are changing too much, too soon and could lead to several abnormalities."
Internet filtering
According to a 2009 report on internet filtering in the UAE by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), a partnership of the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the SecDev Group of Ottawa, the UAE government "pervasively filters websites that contain pornography or content relating to alcohol and drug use, gay and lesbian issues, or online dating or gambling".
The report said, "ONI testing in 2008-2009 revealed that UAE censors have increased the scope and depth of internet filtering since 2006-2007."
It concluded that the UAE continues to prevent its citizens from accessing a significant amount of internet content spanning a variety of topics deemed as obscene. "Additionally, the state has extended its filtering scheme to the Dubai free zones, which previously enjoyed unfettered internet access, and has increased the depth of technical filtering, blocking more sites across broader categories," it said.
"The UAE now employs SmartFilter software to block content related to nudity, sex, dating, gambling, cults/occult, religious conversion and drugs. Sites pertaining to anonymizer tools, hacking, translation tools (as these have been used as proxies) and VoIP applications are also filtered in this manner," it said.
"Lastly, there are government efforts to monitor internet activities in public internet cafés to ensure connections provided there do not bypass national filtering. Electronic surveillance to monitor objectionable online activities is publicly acknowledged by the authorities," the report added.
