KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 23 — Anyone can prey on children sexually as there is no way to detect them, a senior police officer said today.

DSP Tan Gee Soon, the head of the federal police’s Sexual Investigation Unit (D11), said past cases have shown that there is no "stereotype” of child sexual abusers.

"If you want to spot a paedophile, if you want to spot a perpetrator, can you? Anybody can be one, there’s no one way (to spot), so how are you going to protect your kid?

"You teach them. You have to be caring. What are the warning signs? And you have to take action accordingly,” she said at a seminar here.

Those who sexually abuse children could be from various occupations but tend to find work that grants them access to children, she said.

However, she also noted that psychiatric findings showed that not all paedophiles are child sexual abusers.

"Some people they know they are paedophiles but then they try to look for help, seek doctors, try to refrain from committing sexual offences towards children. Meaning that not all child sexual predators are paedophiles,” she said.

Tan also said the broader term of "child sexual offences” was more suitable, as there is no legal definition in Malaysia for law enforcement officers to use when it comes to the term "paedophile crime”.

In illustrating the difficulties in attempts to classify a crime as having been committed by a paedophile, Tan said questions remain over the criteria of victims’ age with the legal age of consent being 16, while the Child Act regards those below 18 as children.

Questions over the age of the perpetrator and narrow age gaps with victims especially in cases of young teenage offenders, the type of conduct including flashing of one’s’ genitals and even the threshold of the number of child pornographic materials that one owns before being considered a paedophile also have to be determined first, she said.

Tan highlighted the dangers lurking online where sexual predators befriend children and later have offline sexual contact with them, noting that children may in some cases be their own enemy by posting sexually explicit photos of themselves online.

In statistics provided by Tan, rape cases on victims by their social media friends has been on a general upward trend with 26 recorded in 2010, 32 in 2011, 54 in 2012, 44 in 2013, 60 in 2014, 184 in 2015, while there were 104 such cases in the first eight months this year.

Out of rape cases by those befriended through social media platforms in 2015, 138 was through messaging app WeChat, 35 was through Facebook, with the remaining six and two through messaging apps WhatsApp and Beetalk.

For the January-August period this year, WeChat again accounted for most of the social-media related rape cases at 80, 16 through Facebook while five and two cases were linked to WhatsApp and Beetalk, and one through Instagram.

Criminologist Geshina Ayu Mat Saat said at the same seminar that sexual offenders may not be identifiable through socio-demographic indicators, but noted that a profile already exists for sexual offenders, including paedophiles.

"But if you do the assessment based on psychological and criminogenic needs, the profile exists,” she said.

Geshina Ayu said the characteristics of sexual offenders have been identified through profiling and examination of those convicted for such crimes, with the knowledge used to help the public prevent people from becoming victims.

"So we have all 14, 15 characteristics, give to schools, educate the teachers, tell the parents look out for the symptoms and signs to monitor their children,” she said.

She added that over 12,000 of booklets containing such information and other tips to prevent crime have been distributed to the public.

Both Tan and Geshina Ayu were among the four speakers at the third series of the Prevention of Sexual Crimes Seminar organised by the police together with the Malaysia Crime Prevention Foundation.

According to the police, over 500 attended the seminar today, including police officers, prison officers, teachers and non-governmental organisations that work with children.