Online Child Sexual Abuse > 300mn kids exposed to online sexual abuse every year - U of Edinburgh

 

For more than ten years now I have been calling child sex abuse the worst atrocity that mankind has ever inflicted upon itself. 300m children a year makes how many billions in one 18 year generation of youth? And this is just online abuse. Count all the other forms of abuse (see my book on the side bar), and the number of traumatically abused kids in one generation far exceeds the entire number of casualties (dead or wounded) of all the wars and genocides of the entire 20th century.

More than 300m children victims

of online sexual abuse every year

First global study of its kind exposes ‘staggering scale’ of crime, with one in nine men in the US admitting to the offence

More than 300 million children across the globe are victims of online sexual exploitation and abuse each year, research suggests.

In what is believed to be the first global estimate of the scale of the crisis, researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that 12.6% of the world’s children have been victims of nonconsensual talking, sharing and exposure to sexual images and video in the past year, equivalent to about 302 million young people.

A similar proportion – 12.5% – had been subject to online solicitation, such as unwanted sexual talk that can include sexting, sexual questions and 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, and abuse of AI deepfake technology.

The research suggested that the US is a particularly high-risk area. The university’s Childlight initiative – which aims to understand the prevalence of child abuse – includes a new global index, which found that one in nine men in the US (equivalent to almost 14 million) admitted online offending against children at some point.

Surveys found 7% of British men, equivalent to 1.8 million, admitted the same.

The research also found many men admitted they would seek to commit physical sexual offences against children if they thought it would be kept secret.

The chief executive of Childlight, Paul Stanfield, 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.

“Child abuse material is so prevalent that files are on average reported to watchdog and policing organisations once every second.

“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.”

Stephen Kavanagh, the executive director of Interpol, said traditional law enforcement approaches were 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,” he said.

I think 'billions' rather than millions is more correct.

Grace Tame, a child sexual abuse survivor, who founded the Grace Tame Foundation, said a centralised global research database was essential to safeguarding children.

=======================================================