Boys and very young children at greater risk of most severe online sexual exploitation
- Awareness
- 17/03/2018
- INTERPOL and ECPAT International

Ground-breaking research recently released by INTERPOL and ECPAT International into the online sexual exploitation of children suggests that when online images or videos of child sexual abuse depict boys or very young children, the abuse is more likely to be severe.

- Law enforcement officials face multiple challenges in identifying victims and offenders, even with powerful tools such as the ICSE Database.
- A significant proportion (61 per cent) of analysed series contained images and videos that were both abusive and exploitative in character, and in the vast majority of the analysed series from child modelling sites, both abusive and exploitative material was visible.
- Accurate determination of core characteristics of victims such as age is a challenge, particularly across ethnic groups.
- Even though most offenders were male, there are some females involved in the abuse and exploitation of children – and more needs to be understood about this phenomenon.
- The phenomenon of "youth-produced sexual imagery" appears to present a challenge to international law enforcement, both in terms of the detection and integration of this imagery with international image databases, and the identification and classification of its victims.
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