New insights into anonymous child sexual abuse material offenders

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Preliminary findings from our latest research on individuals who search for child sexual abuse material reveals invaluable new insights for the prevention of online crimes of sexual violence against children.

The spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online has become a global issue of epidemic proportions. With the advancement of technology, the amount of CSAM has grown exponentially and explosively. Crimes of sexual violence against children of which there is recorded footage are particularly traumatic for the child, as the mere awareness that there is a video recording or photograph of their sexual abuse, coupled with the fear of its possible spread and circulation online, can have a life-long devastating impact.

The prevention of these crimes cannot be successful if we only look at them from one angle. Our approach must be multi-faceted and address each actor involved. We are especially lacking an accurate understanding of the offenders of online child sexual abuse. This is because most previous research tends to cover convicted samples of offenders, or those who have come to the attention of authorities. By learning more about those who commit the offences, we can develop more effective prevention strategies.

We recognise that we still need to know more. Our Protect Children research team has been conducting innovative research on anonymous CSAM users over the past three years. We have learnt a lot about the crimes, however there are more questions yet to be answered. Seeking to answer these questions, as part of our EU-funded Project 2KNOW, we developed a new voluntary, anonymous survey of individuals who search for child sexual abuse material or help resources on dark web search engines.​ The survey received ethics approval from the University of Eastern Finland in June 2023, and we began data collection on 1 July 2023.​ Since then, we have received over 2,400 responses.

The preliminary findings from this survey reveal important insights for the prevention of online sexual violence against children.

Preliminary findings:

Respondent demographics

The majority of respondents to the survey are young men, aged 18-25. 58% of respondents are between 18-25 years old. 80% identify as male, 13% female and 7% non-binary.

Whilst the gender of the respondents is largely unsurprising, it is shocking to see that the majority of those searching for CSAM on dark web search engines are young adults.

Motivation to view child sexual abuse material

Research has indicated that there are a number of motivators behind viewing child sexual abuse material. Sexual interest in children is a clear motivation, however there are other reasons too.

When asked what their main motivation is for searching for CSAM, 50% of respondents to our survey said that they were primarily motivated by their sexual interest in children.

Other respondents say that they are looking for a way to control their emotions, looking to understand their own experiences of abuse, or they have become desensitised to pornography.

Habitual use of pornography

Escalation of pornography use has been cited as a possible pathway to use of CSAM, as viewers become desensitised to increasingly extreme material. The preliminary results suggest that this may be the case, as 75% of respondents say that they viewed pornography habitually before starting to search for CSAM.​ 63% say that they viewed pornography every day.

Victim demographics

When asking about the age and gender of the children depicted in the abuse material that the respondents search for and view, we found that the majority of respondents search for material depicting girls. Most say that they search for material depicting children aged 11 to 14 years old.

These demographics align with reports from the Internet Watch Foundation, which find that material depicting girls makes up the majority of reported CSAM. However, the IWF has increasingly found that the abuse material that depicts boys is often more severe and violent.

Adverse childhood experiences

We asked the respondents whether they had experienced any adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, and emotional and physical neglect. Interestingly, these questions had the lowest response rate in the whole survey, as it seems respondents are not comfortable discussing their own experiences of adversity in childhood. Those that did respond showed high rates of ACEs, with 41% disclosing very frequent emotional abuse, and between 34-37% rates of very frequent physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, and physical neglect.

Project 2KNOW

Project 2KNOW aims to support and improve national and international data collection on violence against children by developing a sustainable and replicable data collection model that is suited to gathering information about online sexual violence against children. Project 2KNOW brings together three project partners: the University of Eastern Finland, the Council of the Baltic Sea States, and Protect Children.

Read more about Project 2KNOW

Project 2KNOW is funded by the European Commission’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV) under the 2022 call for proposals to prevent and combat gender-based violence and violence against children (CERV-2022-DAPHNE).