Europol: We should be more concerned with explicit content generated by children and distributed online

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, Europol has been monitoring various indicators to assess the scope of online child sexual abuse and to determine whether there is an increase in the production and/or distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Although the data is still fragmented and incomplete, there are strong indications there has been an increase in the number of cases of child sexual abuse in the lockdown period. Referrals from third party countries, as well as from EU member states, have reached record highs in recent months, particularly in relation to CSAM accessed and distributed on the web during the COVID-19 crisis.

Data from INSAFE shows the CSAM contacts made to helplines in the first quarter of 2020 saw a sharp increase. Basically, in the first three months of this year, the most reports from the community in the last four years were registered: from 9 thousand calls per day in 2016 to 15 thousand in March 2020.

• The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) registered a 106% increase in the number of reports of suspected cases of sexual exploitation of children.
• In turn, Internet Watch Foundation (a registered charity organization, based in the United Kingdom, dealing with the identification and elimination of online child sexual abuse images and videos) reported almost 9 million blocked attempts in Great Britain to access images and videos featuring CSAM during the lockdown.
• According to Europol experts, the teenagers around the world have contacted the helplines for help more frequently. Children in the Republic of Moldova were also affected during the lockdown from the actions of online offenders. The number of online child sexual abuses, registered by the International Center La Strada Moldova in the first half of this year, tripled compared to the same period last year.

What are the causes?

In fact, the lockdown period meant a combination of “fertile” circumstances for people with niche interests:

• Offenders are likely to seek to take advantage of emotionally vulnerable and isolated children.
• Children had much more access to the internet, were left for long periods without supervision, to compensate for ordinary activities in real life with online games, communication on social networks and various instant applications.
• Adults working remotely were not able to monitor children’s online activity and had less time to engage in activities with children. Due to this, many parents failed to physically observe the signs of stress, isolation and loneliness in their children’s behavior.
• In these circumstances, may become inclined to produce child sexual exploitation material, exchange such content, pass it to known and unknown people, including adults, just “for fun” or keep up with community rules – “all do this”.

The full Europol report with the main findings and data on the behaviors of offenders and victims of online child sexual abuse during the COVID-19 pandemic can be found here.