A large part of Internet users of different ages and from all over the world do use it in order to get and consume pornography, meet sexual partners or plan for intimate relationships. In Morocco, sexuality itself is a great deal since living one's sexuality is dependent on religious and social determinants of individual freedoms, sexual education and empowerment of women. The aim of the study is explore Internet misuses, sexual abuses initiated or totally conducted through Internet in Morocco as well as couple issues and the concept of faithfulness, hypothesizing that Moroccan people use and misuse internet the same way worldwide, but with very few means of protection against potential offenders. We found that nearly a third of people interviewed during the study confirm that they regularly consume pornography on Internet, with an obvious gender difference, that half under-18 years old interviewed teens have for at least once undressed in front of a webcam, or sent naked photos of them to unknown cyber-interlocutors, and finally, that sexual assaults in the Internet are as frequent as sexual assaults happening in the real life, with possible and frequent connections between risky behaviours on line and real life sexual assaults.
he World Wide Web is the most widely shared and spread Internet application, through which Internet became the most accessible, modern and multitasks medium as well as an inexhaustible source of information, pictures and sounds.
Quick, exhaustive and easy to use, Internet has definitely conquered the world. Morocco is far from being an exception to the rule. Indeed, there are 1,5 million Internet Access (ADSL and 3G) and about 13,2 million net surfers identified by January 2011 (www.alexa.com).
Furthermore, these estimations are expected to increase. We notice that the Internet users are ten times more numerous than Internet access. Moroccan Internet surfers tend to get connected in cyber-cafes rather than at home. The average connection fee in a cyber-cafe is about 0.4 to 0,6 € per hour. However, in Morocco Internet as a daily tool is new and there are very few measures (technological, social, as well as legal) which are set to protect the consumer (Fathi, 2011).
Stern and Handel (2001) specified that a large part of Internet users of different ages do use it in order to get and consume pornography, meet sexual partners or plan for intimate relationships. This dynamic can be facilitated by Internet's own intrinsic properties. Indeed, Internet is “an every man's land”, a space where limits between virtuality and reality are tenuous, and where being anonymous may provide an impression of safety as it can take out guilt and inhibition. Therefore, intimate and/or sexual issues can be discussed, exchanged or showed more easily (Stern and Handel, 2001).
In Morocco, sexuality itself is a great deal since living one's sexuality is dependent on religious and social determinants of individual freedoms, sexual education and empowerment of women. Restrictions and taboos are still overwhelming (Kadri et al., 2009). Consequently, It was interesting to study for the very first time and far from any moralistic point of view how Internet can house or even more, facilitate what can be considered as “irrelevant” and impossible to do in “real life” sexuality, and in what ways this limitless freedom area can be related to misuses and risk-taking behaviors.
The personal computer screen still does not prevent from Internet dangers. On the contrary, being alone in front of one's computer may enhance feelings of safety, harmlessness and omnipotence and increase the “risk of risk-taking”. Sending one's photos, giving intimate data or appearing undressed via a webcam are the most prevalent risky behaviors that may have disastrous effects on victims life. Furthermore, risk does not vanish once computers are turned off. Indeed, sexual assaults initiated on the Internet often continue in real life and the risk gets bigger the younger are the Internet users and potential victims. These realities are particularly deleterious in the Moroccan context with many taboos overwhelming sexuality, very insufficient, inadequate and non-institutionalized sexual education. These are the reasons why it is necessary and urgent to inform about the issue, to think of and set up prevention strategies that implicate parents, teachers, educators, medical care givers and internet users so that better information and adequate prevention can make Internet a safer space.
