Today, child-rights organisation Protect Children has launched ReDirection Youth, a free anonymous online resource for young people who are concerned about their own sexual behaviour online.

Protect Children's CEO Nina Vaaranen-Valkonen was interviewed for the recent news article in The Guardian, highlighting the growing threat of sadistic online exploitation of children and how to address it.

Join us for the official launch of ReDirection Youth, an anonymous online intervention designed to support young people who are concerned about their online sexual behaviour.

Digital environments are important spaces for many neurodivergent children and young people. For some, online interactions and communication may feel more manageable than face-to-face situations. Digital devices are also important support tools in everyday activities such as communication, time management, organising everyday life, and strengthening independence. However, there are also risks associated with digital environments. Neurodivergent children and young people are a

AI smart glasses have made covert recording easier than ever. Images and videos produced in this way may constitute image-based sexual abuse and exploitation – a form of gender-based violence in which images are used to exploit, humiliate, or sexually violate a person.

Protect Children developed a new global survey for victims and survivors of image-based child sexual violence. The survey is part of our Project Lens, and aims to understand and prevent emerging forms of image-based sexual violence against children.

Preventing child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSAE) is a key EU priority. Knowledge on prevention pathways and face-to-face (F2F) treatment services for at-risk individuals is limited. This study maps the availability and distribution of institutional, self-referral F2F services in six EU countries participating in Project Bridge, an EU-funded initiative connecting individuals with sexual interest in children at risk of committing CSAE to preventive care, to identify gaps a

Protect Children has Analysed Over 4 Million Child Sexual Abuse Material Images to End the Revictimisation of Victims and Survivors, Support Their Recovery, and Restore Their Dignity

The protection of children from sexual abuse is of paramount importance to society, and the threat of this abuse has only grown in recent years. Those who pose this threat, child sex offenders, have been found to congregate in online communities where they can trade abusive material and interact with each other. Despite concerns raised in research about the harmful influence of these communities on their members, they remain greatly understudied.

A pioneering service for CSAM survivors, the ECHO Survivor Hub launches in the UK, with ambitions for international expansion. ECHO provides survivors of CSAM with a package of support, including addressing ongoing trauma, supporting the removal of material, enabling voice within criminal justice processes, and opportunity to explore compensation options.

Our new report explores experiences of 24,912 survivors of child sexual violence collected in 36 languages through the Global Our Voice Survivor Survey, unveiling the specific characteristics and devastating consequences of online abuse through the comprehensive examination of online, in-person, and mixed victimisation experiences.

The research will explore how different technology ecosystems facilitate and drive abuse, and how they influence offender’s behaviours.

Google Search deploys a "Onebox" feature at the top of the results page when users conduct searches for Child Sexual Abuse Material. This study evaluates the impact of a strategic shift in this feature, comparing a revised intervention, focused on repercussions and therapeutic resources, to a previous iteration that focused on reporting.

Warning messages have been used to disrupt individuals seeking online child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and promote engagement with support services, yet large-scale field evidence on message content remains limited, particularly in high anonymity environments. This study reports a field experiment on Ahmia.fi, a Tor search engine, examining how warning message content influences behavior. Across a 140-day period, almost 20 million searches were observed, with over 3 million

NEWS DNA is consistently developing children’s digital safety skills together with its partner Protect Children, which has been organizing digital safety workshops for young schoolchildren for several years. This spring, the company also distributed digital skills exercise booklets to more than 230,000 Finnish homes. Although children are starting to use smartphones later than before, they still face major risks online – which makes digital safety skills more important than e

The proliferation of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) on digital platforms poses a critical challenge for online safety, especially for children. Despite global efforts to combat CSAM, opportunities for exposure remain widespread, with limited research on its developmental and psychosocial impacts.

Protect Children developed a new global survey for victims and survivors of image-based child sexual violence. The survey is part of our Project Lens, and aims to understand and prevent emerging forms of image-based sexual violence against children.

Protect Children, as a member of ECLAG (Ending Child Sexual Abuse Group), have signed the joint statement below calling for EU policymakers toact urgently, for a clear and legal framework to be restored to ensure that child sexual abuse material can be detected, reported, and removed.

Protect Children Annual Report 2025

Protect Children hosted a unique ‘Protect Children & Content Creators for Children’s Online Safety’ event in Finland that brought popular content creators, the world’s leading social media companies, and service providers together to talk about online child safety and responsible blogging for the whole family.