MORE than 300 million children a year are victims of online sexual exploitation and abuse, a new study from Scottish university researchers has found.
With files containing sexual images of children reported once every second, the authors said pupils “in every classroom, in every school, in every country” are victims of this “hidden pandemic”.
The statistics appear in a report by the Childlight Global Child Safety Institute at the University of Edinburgh. The study is the first global estimate of the scale of the crisis.
The report indicates that one in eight (12.6%) of the world’s children have been victims of non-consensual taking, sharing and exposure to sexual images and video in the past year. That amounts to about 302 million young people.
In addition, 300 million children globally (12.5%) are estimated to have been subject to online solicitation in the past year, such as unwanted sexual talk which can include non-consensual sexting, unwanted sexual questions and unwanted sexual act requests by adults or other youths.
Offences can also take the form of “sextortion”, where predators demand money from victims to keep images private, to abuse of AI deepfake technology.
While problems exist in all parts of the world, the United States emerged as a particularly high-risk area. Childlight’s new global index, Into the Light, found high levels of CSAM (child sexual abuse material) hosted there as well as the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, one in nine men in the States (10.9%, equating to almost 14 million men) admitted online sexual offending against children at some point in their lives. Representative surveys found the same said by 7% of men in the UK – equating to 1.8 million offenders – and by 7.5% of men in Australia (nearly 700,000).
Many more across the three countries said they would also seek to commit contact sexual offences against children if they thought it would be kept secret.
Childlight chief executive Paul Stanfield said the problem, which has grown worse since Covid-19, requires to be treated as a global health emergency like the coronavirus.
He said: “This is on a staggering scale that in the UK alone equates to forming a line of male offenders that could stretch all the way from Glasgow to London – or filling Wembley Stadium 20 times over. And child abuse material is so prevalent that files are on average reported to watchdog and policing organisations once every second.”
Stanfield, a former senior officer for the UK’s National Crime Agency and former director of Interpol, added: “This is a global health pandemic that has remained hidden for far too long. It occurs in every country, it’s growing exponentially and it requires a global response. We need to act urgently and treat it as a public health issue that can be prevented. Children can’t wait.
“Data shows that vulnerable children are being exploited and sexually abused across the world, every second of every day. We are therefore also providing support to frontline responders, ensuring they can turn data into action to safeguard children from immediate and ongoing harm.
"However, police cannot deal with the scale of the problem and more needs done to prevent it happening in the first place. Children’s safety needs to be put before the privacy of offenders and corporate profit.”
Debi Fry, professor of international child protection research at Edinburgh University, led the Childlight project.
She said: “The world needs to know these atrocities are affecting children in every classroom, in every school, in every country. These aren’t harmless images; they are deeply damaging, and the abuse continues with every view and the failure of taking down this abusive content.”
Stephen Kavanagh, executive director of Interpol, said: “Online exploitation and abuse is a clear and present danger to the world’s children, and traditional law enforcement approaches are struggling to keep up.
"We must do much more together at a global level, including specialist investigator training, better data sharing and equipment to effectively fight this pandemic and the harm it inflicts on millions of young lives around the world.”
Scottish Minister for Children and Young People Natalie Don said: “Keeping children and young people safe from sexual abuse and exploitation is of the utmost importance to the Scottish Government and we are working closely with key partners to improve our knowledge of and response to these deeply concerning issues.
“These are global problems which require global solutions and I welcome the much needed work of Childlight to harness worldwide data to help develop tangible action to protect children.”
