Child sexual abuse is a global and dynamic issue of large scale that too many people do not recognise.
Our goal is to raise awareness about the magnitude of the problem. Whilst child sexual abuse can happen to any child, it is not inevitable. Everyone has a role to play in prevention. Through understanding and fulfilling these roles, we can collectively help protect children from sexual harm.
Take a look at the various ways in which we work to support our goal of raising awareness and increasing the understanding of our collective roles in preventing child sexual abuse.
We contributed to a special report by Chief Interviewer Decca Aitkenhead on the issue of sibling sexual abuse which featured in the Sunday Times Magazine. Despite being the most common form of child sexual abuse within families, it is rarely reported at the time and receives little attention from the media. The article includes a range of powerful and courageous interviews with survivors and testimony from some of the world’s leading academics on the subject including Stuart Allardyce, Director of Lucy Faithfull Foundation Scotland.
In its first draft illegal harms code, we are pleased to see that Ofcom has recommended large search services deploy warnings to signpost to services like our Stop It Now when a user enters search terms indicating that they are seeking illegal child sexual abuse material. However, we would like to see this type of intervention adopted more widely beyond large search services. We also think that Ofcom’s recommendations on hash matching, and URL blocking can be strengthened with supporting deterrence messaging. We also encourage Ofcom to consider grooming frictions targeted at those seeking to cause harm to children to disrupt their behaviour, which if coupled with safety measure by default for child users, could result in more comprehensive protections for children.
You can find out more about our work to scale online warnings in Project Intercept.
We published research that shows that 70% of UK adults do not know that AI technologies are already being used to create sexual images of children. And very concerningly, 40% of UK adults either do not know or believe that AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery is legal when in fact it is illegal.
Sexual images of children created by AI technologies are illegal and extremely harmful. Such images normalise the sexualisation of children and often real images of children are being manipulated, some of whom have previously been victims of sexual abuse.
Shining a light on the dangers of AI technology is a wake-up call to all of us – tech companies, government, law enforcement, child protection agencies - we must all work together to make new technologies safe for children.
Read our blogs to find out more:
A call to end AI-generated child sexual abuse
CEO Deborah Denis appears on BBC News to discuss the role of AI in child sexual abuse
National coverage we have achieved to highlight the dangers of AI generated child sexual abuse:
We attended an event in Parliament hosted by the NSPCC and chaired by Sir Sajid Javid MP to celebrate the passage of the Online Safety Act. It is the culmination of many years of work by organisations and individuals dedicated to making a safe online world for children.
Throughout the passage of the Bill in Parliament, we worked in alliance with other children’s charities to raise awareness of online child sexual abuse as well as measures that can be taken to prevent it. Some examples of our collaborative approach:
- We signed Frida’s letter, a lived experience campaigner supported by the NSPCC. Frida’s letter asked technology companies to put children’s and survivor’s voices at the heart of debates on child safety online, in particular with the implementation of end-to-end encryption. Respecting the rights of survivors and the safety of users
- We supported Barnardo’s in a briefing to Parliamentarians on pornography amendments in preparation for the committee stage in the House of Lords. The briefing featured one of our case studies as well as a quote from Donald Findlater, Director of Stop It Now, about how pornography use can become problematic for some people. Online Safety Bill: Illegal and prohibited pornographic material
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Want to learn more about our advocacy work or how you can support our efforts? Reach out to our advocacy team and discover how you can make a difference.