Six ways to help end online child sexual exploitation and abuse
Evidence from the Disrupting Harm project
Children and young people’s lives are an increasingly seamless interplay of online and in-person experiences – as they harness the internet’s many opportunities for learning, connecting with peers, and expressing themselves creatively. But the internet was not designed with their best interests in mind – for millions of children across the world, these potentially empowering online experiences can turn devastating as they become victims of a range of online harms; from exposure to potentially harmful content, to harassment, bullying or sexual abuse.
Results from the Disrupting Harm study showed that across 13 countries in Africa and South-East Asia, up to 20 per cent of 12-17-year-olds had experienced online sexual abuse over the course of a one-year period. Most often children experienced online sexual abuse on social media platforms, frequently perpetrated by someone the child already knew: a friend or acquaintance, a romantic partner (or ex), or even a family member. Whoever the perpetrator is, they exploit digital platforms to contact children, expose them to sexual content, or groom or coerce them to engage in sexual acts – sometimes livestreaming their abuse.
The impact of such abuse is severe. Child survivors are two to four times more likely to self-harm or have suicidal thoughts, and experience significantly higher rates of anxiety. Crucially, one-third of children who experienced abuse did not tell anyone about it, and only 3 per cent reported it to the police or a helpline. This means that a significant proportion of children may never receive help or support. Caregivers, particularly those who do not use the internet very much, often feel unprepared to help their children navigate a complex digital landscape. Meanwhile, gaps in legislation, weak law enforcement, and insufficient action from the technology industry combine to allow offenders to act with impunity.
Disrupting Harm (funded by Safe Online and implemented by ECPAT, INTERPOL and UNICEF Innocenti) is the largest comparable research study of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation and abuse of children. Implemented in 25 countries so far, it is capturing the experiences of children and youth, caregivers, frontline service providers, justice professionals and law enforcement agencies. The purpose is to understand children’s experiences of online sexual abuse and how national systems are responding to the issue today, and what could be done in the future to make children’s lives safer. By generating high quality evidence and targeted recommendations, adapted to the national context, the project is supporting the development and implementation of national plans (or ‘roadmaps’) to help address this growing threat.
What can be done to improve national prevention and response?
Below we provide six key challenges identified from Disrupting Harm research conducted to-date in 13 countries and concrete actions that countries are recommended to take to respond to them. Forthcoming research currently ongoing in 12 countries will further advance these insights in 2025/2026.
Knowledge is key to prevention. Between 30 per cent and 60 per cent of caregivers across the 13 countries felt that they knew less about the internet than their children.
Children, parents, and educators need evidence-informed and accessible information about online risks and how to avoid or manage them. Governments, NGOs, companies and schools should offer training for caregivers to improve their understanding of the digital environment and teach them how to best support children’s safety online.
Critically for prevention, children should be provided with age-relevant and culturally appropriate information about sexual and reproductive health, consent, personal boundaries and how to recognize predatory or harmful behaviours in-person, and online.
Law enforcement units, justice professionals and frontline workers (for example, professionals working in schools or social services) often don’t have the training, staff, equipment and systems needed to be able to identify and effectively manage online sexual abuse cases.
To address this, governments should ensure that such agencies are provided with the critical resources, knowledge and skills to be able to protect and support children in the digital age. This includes strengthening the capacity of the police to identify and investigate online sexual abuse cases and the capacity of the judicial system to effectively prosecute them.
Professionals working to keep children safe and supported need to understand what it’s like to be a child living in the digital age, or they are less likely to be a trusted source where children can go to seek help.
Technology companies have a crucial role to play in preventing abuse.
Over half of children subjected to online sexual exploitation and abuse reported that the most recent incident happened on a social media platform. It is clear that social media companies – particularly those with a large user base – need to do more to protect children.
All platforms should work towards strengthening their prevention measures, detection mechanisms and remediation processes. The technology industry should not only react to abuse, but actively design systems that minimize risks to children from the outset. Requiring companies to conduct child rights impact assessments as part of broader human rights due diligence efforts may be helpful as a starting point.
Many countries lack key legislation to deal with online sexual abuse. Furthermore, the research has shown that children going through the justice system were often immersed in intimidating and complicated processes which left them feeling traumatized and marginalized.
To address this, children should be given appropriate support before, during and after reporting these crimes. National legislation should be aligned with international standards to enable the criminalization of technology-facilitated crimes such as online grooming and livestreaming of child sexual abuse - and to ensure the protection of child victims and witnesses.
Children should be provided with safe, confidential ways to report abuse and be provided with legal, financial, and psychological support throughout the justice process.
Like many complex social issues, addressing the issue of online sexual abuse requires effective coordination between many different governmental agencies and the appropriate involvement of civil society and the private sector.
Many countries suffer from ministry or departmental ‘silos’ – implementing fragmented approaches which end up failing to achieve their objectives. Positive examples identified through the research suggest that such problems are best addressed through the nomination of one government agency to lead the response and assigning clear responsibilities across involved agencies.
Dedicated budget lines to support effective cross-agency collaboration should also be established.
Countries often suffer from having insufficient administrative and information systems in place to monitor and report on online sexual abuse cases. This is sometimes linked to legislative gaps in defining or criminalizing different forms of online child sexual exploitation and abuse.
Governments should adapt their data monitoring and reporting systems to enable the effective tracking of the problem and the effectiveness of implemented solutions, including updated classifications of cases of violence against children (including technology-facilitated cases).
Evidence that drives change
Conducting research on online sexual abuse is uniquely challenging. Safeguarding children, respecting survivors’ voices and experiences, and managing sensitive data, all require an exceptional level of care. Disrupting Harm’s research approach, breadth of data, multi-national reach and cross-sectoral partnerships ensure that the research and its resulting recommendations are informed by a wide range of evidence, making it relevant, robust and ethically sound. An example of its impact is that in 2023, Disrupting Harm findings and recommendations informed crucial amendments to Malaysia's Sexual Offences Against Children Act which enables more effective prosecution of sexual extortion and livestreaming of child sexual abuse.
The success of the first phase of Disrupting Harm has led to further funding and expansion to 12 new countries, with new findings expected in 2025-26. This will include a range of new insights from the 25 countries that have implemented Disrupting Harm so far. We hope its results will help contribute to a world in which every child, no matter where they live, can reap the benefits of a digital age and live free from sexual abuse – whether online or in-person.
To learn more, read our latest Disrupting Harm brief Evidence-Based Actions to End Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
The Disrupting Harm research project is funded by Safe Online and implemented by ECPAT, INTERPOL and UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight.