Wrapping Up 2025: Five Years of Protecting Children

BLOG POST 

As we step into the new year, we are taking a moment to reflect on an extraordinary year of impact. Five years ago, we set out with a clear mission. To prevent child sexual abuse and exploitation, and to support those harmed by it.  

Child sexual abuse remains a global crisis. One in five children experiences some form of sexual abuse before the age of eighteen, and millions of images and videos of abuse circulate online every year. These harms are lifelong, but we know that support and prevention can make a real difference.  

In 2025, our small and fiercely passionate team were more dedicated than ever to turn our mission into meaningful impact. This year reminded us of what is possible when compassion and collaboration come together.  

Read on to see what we achieved last year and join us as we continue the journey in the year ahead. 

Support & Serve 

In 2025, supporting victims, survivors, and their families remained at the heart of our work. 

Promoting Healing for Impacted Families  

When a child experiences sexual violence, the impact reaches far beyond the child alone. Parents are often left feeling isolated and unsure where to turn. In 2025, we focused on ensuring that families did not have to face this alone.

In Finland, we held four You Are Enough™ peer support groups for parents of child victims of sexual violence, offering a safe space for connection and healing during one of the most challenging periods a family can face.

Beyond Finland, we expanded our peer support group model to the United Kingdom, Latvia, and Ireland. This meant that more families, across more countries, could access support when they needed it most.

Supporting Young Adult Survivors 

In August 2025, we piloted our first You Are Not Alone™ peer support group for young adults aged 18–28 who have experienced sexual violence in childhood. This newly developed group fosters young survivors’ healing, resilience, and hope for the future. It marked an important step in ensuring support does not end when childhood does. 

Analysing 3 Million CSAM Images  

This year, Protect Children analysts working within the Project Arachnid network reached over 3 million analysed child sexual abuse material (CSAM) images, leading to over 1.95 million takedown requests sent to electronic service providers. This significant milestone illustrates Protect Children’s ongoing dedication to ending the cycle of violence and revictimisation. 

Improving the Global Response for Victims and Survivors of CSAM 

At the end of the year, our survivor-focused work culminated in the launch of the ECHO Survivor Hub. This collaborative global initiative will support victims and survivors of CSAM who are no longer part of an investigation. The hub will amplify survivor voices, support efforts to remove CSAM, promote access to justice, and contribute to long term healing.

Prevent & Protect 

In 2025, we advanced our research to better understand child sexual abuse and strengthened our efforts to prevent harm before it occurs. 

Expanding Efforts to Prevent CSAM Perpetration 

A major step in our mission to tackle online child sexual abuse came with the expansion of the ReDirection program to Poland and Latvia. ReDirection is an anonymous online self-help resource that guides perpetrators to stop using CSAM. This year’s evaluation showed that the program effectively reduces CSAM offending. It is currently available in five languages, with many more coming soon.

👉 If your organisation is interested in tackling CSAM use in your country, contact Anna Ovaska, Deputy Director, at: anna.ovaska@suojellaanlapsia.fi to explore becoming a scaling partner. 

New Research Initiatives to Understand and Prevent Abuse 

In 2025, we built on our research to understand offender behaviour by starting an exciting new research project, Tell Me More About Tech. We surveyed online CSAM offenders to examine how different technology ecosystems facilitate abuse and influence offender behaviour – the research results will be published in early 2026. 

👉 Sign up to our newsletter to stay tuned. 

We were also proud to launch Project Lens, a project where we aim to understand and prevent emerging forms of image-based child sexual violence, in particular in the under-focused region of Central Asia.  

During the year, we wrapped up a number of collaborative projects funded by the European Commission, including 2KNOW, 2PS, and Bridge, each contributing lasting tools and insights for the field. 

Contributing to High-Quality Impact-Driven Research 

Throughout the year, we continued to generate high quality research to inform policy, practice, and prevention. 

We contributed to a peer reviewed research article analysing responses to our surveys on anonymous online CSAM offenders and examining the differences between offenders who have been charged for a crime compared to those who have not.  

We also published a research report on survivors’ experiences of image-based child sexual violence, in which we highlighted urgent gaps in prevention and protection. 

In addition, we reviewed international literature and practice on deterrence and help-seeking messaging, mapping existing approaches and identifying opportunities for more effective interventions

Exchanging Knowledge and Sharing Expertise 

Throughout the year, our team shared expertise at key events around the world, including IPPPRI, ISPCAN, C0C0N, the World Police Summit, CSARRN, and Interpol conferences. We also hosted our own conference at the European Parliament to mark the conclusion of the 2KNOW project. These moments helped build stronger connections, spark new ideas, and turn research into real world action. 

Recognition and Awards 

In a true highlight of the year, we were honoured to receive the prestigious Academic Contribution Award at the Excellence in Online Protection gala. The award recognised our holistic, research-based approach to tackling online child sexual abuse and exploitation. 

We were also honoured to take on new positions of trust. Protect Children joined the Advisory Group on Research and Development within Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre and the European Commission Network for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse. Our Executive Director, Nina Vaaranen-Valkonen, joined the INTERPOL Crimes Against Children Unit Safeguarding Advisory Board and became a Patron of the organisation StopSO. 

Advocate & Amplify 

In 2025, we centered survivor voices and fiercely advocated for the rights of children and young people in Europe and globally.  

Amplifying the Voices and Wisdom of Victims and Survivors around the World 

In 2025, Protect Children continued listening to the long-silenced voices of victims and survivors of childhood sexual violence, gathering insights from 25,000 victims and survivors worldwide through the Global Our Voice Survivor Survey. We published powerful reports presenting insights from victims and survivors from the United Kingdom and the Nordics; Greek-, Latvian-, Serbian-, Swedish-, Norwegian-, and Italian-speaking victims and survivors, and examined experiences of men subjected to sexual violence in childhood. 

In June 2025, we co-hosted a high-level conference in Stockholm with the Justice Initiative and the Nordic Child Tech Policy Alliance to advocate for stronger measures to prevent and end childhood sexual violence across the Nordic countries. 

Survivor Advocacy and Policy Engagement 

We continued our work with the Our Voice Survivor Advocacy Group and hosted an in-person meeting for survivors in Helsinki, where participants had an opportunity to share their experiences in a safe and confidential environment and guide the next steps for the group’s work. 

Our statement submitted to the United Nations highlighted the emerging patterns of sale, sexual exploitation, and sexual abuse of children, offering recommendations to improve child protection systems and survivor support. 

We also advanced our status as an Observer to the Lanzarote Committee - at its 46th plenary meeting, held in Moldova from November 19-21, 2025, our Executive Director Nina Vaaranen-Valkonen was honoured to present the results of Protect Children's work, ensuring that the voices of survivors inform and shape decision-making even at the highest levels. 

Increasing our Presence in the Media  

Utilising a variety of channels, Protect Children spread awareness about the scale, forms, and impacts of child sexual violence, dismantled stereotypes and stigma related to the topic, and shared knowledge essential for the prevention of future crimes. Our work was featured in 67 national and international news outlets, including in Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Serbia.  

👉 Visit our press room and subscribe to receive our press releases. 

Empower & Educate 

Educating children and young people remained a key priority for our work in 2025.  

Attending Finland’s Leading Education Fair  

Keeping a beloved tradition, we kicked off 2025 at Educa, Finland’s leading event in education and training. At the event, we shared our educational materials and had fruitful discussions with educators from Finland and abroad. We thank everyone who came by our stand.  

👉 We will be at Educa 2026, come and meet us! 

Developing New Educational Materials 

We continued to create accessible, fun, child-friendly educational resources in multiple languages to support children’s online safety. We developed two new interactive booklets featuring the much-loved Kip Crew characters, helping children practice emotional regulation skills and digital safety skills in an engaging and age-appropriate way.  We also published a guide supporting children to recognise signs of inappropriate behaviour online, and a resource for parents raising awareness about violent online groups.  

Teaching Children Essential Safety Skills 

In 2025, over ten thousand children aged 5-9 from across Finland joined our popular Stop, Slow & Go workshops to practice essential skills related to digital safety, body boundaries, and emotions in a fun and engaging way.  

👉 Sign up your class for upcoming workshops in Finnish and Swedish! 

Engaging Parents and Caregivers in Digital Safety Skills Education  

Parents often feel overwhelmed by the complexity of topics related to digital safety and lack up-to-date knowledge due to daily responsibilities and rapid technological advancements.

With support from Google.org, we launched the More Than a Device initiative to empower parents and caregivers to confidently discuss digital safety skills with their children. The project focuses on understanding how parents prefer to learn and using these insights to pilot digital safety training in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, and Finland. 

Helping Youth Disclose Sexual Violence  

Research and practice show that children often disclose sexual violence to their friend first, and all too often the abuse never gets reported. This motivated us to develop #MyFriendToo, a website empowering young people to help their friends disclose abuse to a safe adult. We are thrilled that in 2025, we expanded the #MyFriendToo website to the US. 

Other Milestones 

Protect Children’s Five-Year Anniversary 

In 2025, we celebrated half a decade of powerful, research-driven action to protect children from all crimes of sexual violence.  

👉 Help us continue protecting children and support our work! 

Launching the Protect Children Internship Program 

We were happy to kick off Protect Children Internship Program to support young professionals with exploring a challenging field of advancing child rights and preventing sexual violence against children.  

👉 Meet our fantastic interns and join the team! 

Expanding our Collaboration Network  

Our year was marked by the strengthening of existing partnerships and establishment of new exciting collaborations with passionate child rights stakeholders around the world. We were delighted to host visitors in our office in Helsinki and pay visits abroad. Among others, we expanded our collaboration network to a new to us, important region – Central Asia.  

👉 We are always happy to meet new partners – contact our Deputy Director Anna Ovaska at: anna.ovaska@suojellaanlapsia.fi to explore collaboration opportunities. 

Drawing on our achievements from 2025, we feel inspired and empowered to continue protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation. We extend heartfelt gratitude to our dearest collaboration partners who have been supporting our vision and mission.

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