Stockholm - Over half of all Swedish girls aged 15 to 18 who access chat rooms and so-called communities on the internet have received unwanted sexual invitations or have been sexually harassed, Svenska Dagbladet reported Tuesday.

The Stockholm daily published the statistics drawn from the annual Youth Barometer, a national survey of 12,000 youths aged between 15 and 24.

The survey suggested that 62 per cent of the girls aged 15 to 18 had been contacted online by a person wanting to discuss sex with them or asking that the girls send a photo even though the girls did not want to.

"With the help of the internet it is possible to contact hundreds or thousands of children at once. There is risk that someone actually falls for it," said psychologist Asa Landberg of the Swedish branch of Save the Children.

The justice ministry is preparing legislation to prevent paedophiles and others from seeking out children over the internet. A bill was due this spring.

The legislation included measures against so-called "grooming" that would ban adults from actively seeking online contact with children with the intent of meeting the children to seduce or assault them sexually.

The perpetrators often anonymously access chat rooms and so-called communities on the internet to lure young victims.

Although the exact number of adults was hard to determine since the perpetrators were anonymous, the issue is worrying, Health and Social Affairs Minister Goran Hagglund said.

Hagglund recently met with internet and telephone operators to discuss how to make it safer for children online.

The survey mirrors a similar report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention that said that about half the girls in a Swedish survey of children aged 13 to 16 said they had been contacted by unknown strangers that they suspected to be adults.

Many of the strangers had expressed interest in sex. (dpa)