Children in Identified Sexual Images – Who Are they? Self‐ and Non‐Self‐Taken Images in the International Child Sexual Exploitation Image Database 2006–2015

Abstract

Child sexual abuse and exploitation material has drawn concern and legislative attention since the turn of the century, and the work to identify children in the images has been a prioritised task through international cooperation. The International Child Sexual Exploitation Image Database (ICSE DB) includes more than 8000 identified victims from nearly 50 countries. The database contains considerable important information about child abuse image crimes. The general aim of this study was to quantify the characteristics of children in identified illegal images from the UK ICSE DB (n = 687) with the subsidiary aim to describe differences between cases of self‐taken images and those whose images had been taken by others. The analysis showed an increase in identified victims during the study years 2006–2015. Almost two‐thirds were female, the majority were white and 44.3 per cent of images were self‐taken (34.4% taken in a coercive and 9.9% in a non‐coercive relationship). Since 2010, the number of self‐taken images each year has exceeded more than 40 per cent of the total number of images in the database. Although self‐taken images may be perceived as less worrisome, two‐thirds were classified as coercive. This is an important argument in favour of continuing to investigate these cases under victim identification programmes. Key Practitioner Messages The ICSE DB includes more than 8000 identified victims and contains important information about child abuse image crimes. A majority of the identified victims were female and white children. Almost half of all images were self‐taken and had been taken in a coercive relationship. Parents and practitioners need to recognise that even if a child sends sexual images these should be considered worrisome and therefore investigated further.

Child sex abuse images and exploitation materials

“…Two-thirds of all the images were classified as coercive. Almost two-thirds of the children identified were white females; 44.3% of the images were self-taken and of these most were taken in a coercive relationship (Quayle, Jonsson, Cooper, Traynor, & Svedin 2018, cited in ECPAT 2018). Another study of 3,503 18-year-old Swedish youth indicated that for 6.5% of those who reported sexual abuse, the abuse had been documented in pictures or videos; these children also experienced more severe forms of CSA, such as penetrative sex, recurrent sexual abuse and multiple offenders (Svedin, 2012cited in ECPAT 2018 In a dataset of 1,965 cases (from the UK ICSE, NCMEC database of identified children), 61% of cases involved single victims, while images of multiple victims were more likely to involve pubescent children.…”

Child Sexual Abuse: Ethics and Evidence

“…Manipulating or coercing a child to produce a nude or sexual image emerges in this study as a common and harmful strategy among online child sex offenders, casting debates on so‐called ‘sexting’ in a new light. The authors note that: ‘Much of the debate about sexting activity has placed responsibility for the images being misused squarely on the child’ (Quayle et al ., , p. 235).…”

“…The paper by Ethel Quayle and colleagues () provides a content analysis of images from the International Child Sexual Exploitation Image Database from 2006 – 2015, which spans the period over which self‐production of images by minors became more frequent. Their analysis distinguishes between self‐taken images and those taken by others, finding that self‐produced images have increased in frequency over time.…”

Blackmail on social media: what do we know and what remains unknown?

“…Moreover, a relationship was observed between engaging in selfdisclosure on social media and becoming a victim of blackmail on social media, with those disclosing more information being at a greater risk of becoming a victim of blackmail (Kopecký 2016). Similarly, those who were willing to share intimate personal photographs were also at risk of becoming a victim of blackmail on social media (Hamilton-Giachritsis, Hanson, Whittle and Beech 2017; Kopecký 2017; Quayle, Jonsson, Cooper, Traynor and Svedin 2018;Van Ouytsel et al 2017).…”