*Sexual Predation & Exploitation/Abuse
*Child Pornography
Key findings:
- TikTok saw removals nearly double between 2019 and 2020
- YouTube has seen a 169% surge in removals between 2018 and 2020
- Facebook saw a modest 3% decrease between 2019 and 2020
Source: Comparitech, February 24, 2021)
Netherlands 77%
US – 5%
France 4%
Russia 2%
Lativia 2 %
Luxembourg 2%
(Internet Watch Foundation Annual Report, 2020)
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) operates the CyberTipline, a national mechanism for the public and electronic service providers to report instances of suspected child sexual exploitation. In 2018 the CyberTipline received more than 18.4 million reports, most of which related to:
(1) Apparent child sexual abuse images. (2) Online enticement, including “sextortion.” (3) Child sex trafficking. (4) Child sexual molestation.
Since its inception, the CyberTipline has received more than 45 million reports.
To further NCMEC’s mission and help reduce proliferation, NCMEC has sent more than 271,000 notifications to electronic service providers regarding publicly accessible websites (URLs) on which suspected child sexual abuse images appeared.
NCMEC’s Child Victim Identification Program, which helps to locate and rescue child victims in abusive images, has reviewed more than 273 million images and videos and law enforcement has identified more than 16,700 child victims. (Source: National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, Exploited Children Statistics. Accessed May 3, 2019)
The annual number of persons prosecuted for commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) cases filed in U.S. district court nearly doubled between 2004 and 2013, increasing from 1,405 to 2,776 cases.
Suspects referred for the possession of child pornography (72 percent) accounted for the majority of all CSEC suspects, followed by those suspected of child sex trafficking (18 percent) and child pornography production (10 percent). Most suspects arrested for CSEC crimes were male (97 percent), were U.S. citizens (97 percent), were white (82 percent), had no prior felony convictions (79 percent) and were not married (70 percent). CSEC suspects had a median age of 39 years, and more than half (56 percent) had no more than a high school education. (Department of Justice, Oct. 2017)
In a survey led by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, 67% of CSAM survivors said the distribution of their images impacts them differently than the hands-on abuse they suffered because the distribution never ends and the images are permanent. (Survivor's Survey, Executive Summary 2017)
67% of Child Sexual Abuse Imagery (CSAI) survivors said the distribution of their images impacts them differently than the hands-on abuse they suffered because the distribution never ends and the images are permanent. (Canadian Centre for Child Protection, 2017)
Child pornography offences have exploded by more than 200 per cent in the last decade, a trend that advocates say is fueled by the easy spread of illicit material over the internet. Incidents of child pornography climbed for the eighth year in a row in 2016. The agency recorded 6,245 incidents last year, up from 4,380 in 2015. That represents a more than 40 per cent rate increase in just one year, and a 233 percent spike from the rate reported in 2006 (Statistics Canada, July 2017)
A 2016 study by the Center for Court Innovation found that between 8,900 and 10,500 children, ages 13 to 17, are commercially exploited each year in the United States. (Center for Court Innovation, 2016)
92% of all child sexual abuse URLs we identified globally in 2016 were hosted in these five countries: Netherlands, UNITED STATES, Canada, France & Russia. (U.S. was ranked 2nd). https://annualreport.iwf.org.uk/assets/pdf/iwf_report_2016.pdf
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection found that children under 12 years old were depicted in 78.30% of the images and videos assessed by their team, and 63.40% of those children were under 8 years of age. Among that same material, they found that 80.42% of the children were girls, while 19.58% were boys.
This year, one in 10 children under the age of 18 will be sexually abused in the United States.
Source: http://www.d2l.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/PREVALENCE-RATE-WHITE-PAPER-D2L.pdf (2013)
The United States is a top producer and consumer of child abuse content. (Thorn, 2014).