Child protection authorities order a woman to stop posting photos of her seven-year old granddaughter on social media

Child protection authorities in Switzerland have ordered a woman to stop posting pictures and photos of her seven-year old granddaughter on social media.



The order came after the girl’s mother, who is said to have a different relationship with the older relative, filed a complaint with the child protection services (KESB) in Bern.



The agency sent a letter to the grandmother asking her to stop publishing pictures and videos of the girl online. But the grandmother responded by saying that she wouldn't be told what to do. She also stressed she was not posting naked pictures of the child.



When the grandmother continued to post pictures of the child online, the KESB threatened her with legal punishment if she refused to comply. In an interview with Swiss Sunday paper SonntagsZeitung, the agency’s president, Charlotte Christener, spoke of a “recognized problem”. She said it often arose when parents were fighting or when one parent demanded that the other parent delete online images of a child.



Around 80 percent of children under the age of two have an online presence, according to internet security firm AGV. One recent Swiss study found that publishing photos of children online constituted an infringement of personal rights and recommended that clearly identifiable images of young children should not be published online.