EU Strategy for a more effective fight against child sexual abuse

Child sexual abuse has life-long consequences for victims. It often goes undetected, as children are abused by perpetrators within their closest circle of trust, undercutting their basic confidence in those who are charged with protecting and supporting them. When the abuse is also recorded and shared online, the violation continues as long as perpetrators share these images and videos online, often for years. Victims have to live with the knowledge that the images and videos of the crimes showing the worst moments of their lives are being circulated and anyone, including friends or relatives, may see them.

In the last years, we have seen both a significant number of cases of child sexual abuse in the EU Member States and a dramatic increase in reports of child sexual abuse online, both globally and in the EU. Furthermore, according to the Internet Watch Foundation, the European Union stills ranks highest in the world for hosting ‘horrific’ images and videos of child sexual abuse, with three in every five child sexual abuse reports (59%) hosted in an EU Member State.

Behind each image and video, there is a real child being abused.

The Internet provides anonymity and an environment in which abusers can interact and find a community that reassures them that their criminal aims are OK, or even incites them to do more. They can, exchange materials, and build their own community. It also fuels demand for child sexual abuse material. There are closed groups where an ‘entrance fee’ in the form of new, unseen child sexual abuse material is required.

The EU fights against these crimes in multiple ways, including through coordinated international police actions in which Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre is a key player. Some recent examples of Europol’s successes include:

• an investigation in Italy with more than 50 suspects,
• the arrest of a 30-year old individual who released videos showing the violent sexual abuse of a pre-school aged girl,
• the arrest of a nursery school teacher and her partner suspected of sexually abusing several children including their own,
• the arrest of a suspect who produced explicit videos of a young boy to gain access to sites and forums on the dark web dedicated to child sexual abuse and exploitation.

Further information concerning recent cases of child sexual abuse that started with a report from an online service provider is available.

Cases of child sexual abuse occur every day in all countries of the European Union.

However, it is likely that investigations only show the tip of the iceberg. The Bergisch-Gladbach investigation in Germany, started in October 2019, shows the massive scale of these cases. Over 40 victims have been identified to date, and hundreds of thousands of images and videos found. Offenders used messenger services (including WhatsApp) to share materials, incite each other and share tips. One such discovered chat groups had 1800 participants. To date, investigators, while still in the initial phases of analysis of devices, have already discovered more than 30,000 leads pointing to all regions of Germany, and have identified more than 50 suspects.

Scale

As reported to the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the number of reports of child sexual abuse online concerning the EU grew from 23,000 in 2010 to more than 1,5 million in 2022, which included more than 5 million images and videos. A similarly dramatic increase occurred globally: from 1 million reports in 2010 to almost 32 million in 2022, which included nearly 88,3 million images and videos. The large number of reports of child sexual abuse online strains law enforcement resources, both human and technological, to process and take action on them.

Complexity

Global nature: The exponential development of the digital world has made this crime a truly global one, and has unfortunately contributed to the creation of a global market for child sexual abuse material. Child sexual abuse material is shared online across borders. In addition, offenders travel to third countries to take advantage of circumstances such as poverty, and weaker law enforcement responses to sexually abuse children.

Technological development: offenders have become increasingly sophisticated in their use of technology. The introduction of end-to-end encryption, while beneficial on the one side to ensure privacy of communications, also enables child abusers to share and trade images and videos with impunity, and incite each other to provide new abuse. Moreover, technology has allowed for the monetization of abuse. Abusers can easily pay to participate virtually in the sexual abuse of children via live-streaming and to access platforms dedicated to child sexual abuse on the dark web.

Real progress can be made only when efforts are stepped up in all relevant areas – in a true multi-stakeholder, multi-disciplinary approach. To achieve this, the Strategy makes use of all the tools at EU’s disposal, both legislative and non-legislative, namely coordination and funding. Its goal is to drive action from all key actors, including law enforcement, social services, health-care professionals, educators, child protection authorities, the judiciary, as well as private entities, in particular industry and civil society.

The strategy sets out eight concrete initiatives, making use of all tools available at EU level. It has three-fold focus on a more effective law enforcement response, better support for victims, and improved prevention.

Actions focused on legislation

• Work closely with Member States to implement fully the Child Sexual Abuse Directive;
• Ensure that EU legislation enables an effective response. In particular, in relation to child sexual abuse online:
  • In a first stage, the Commission proposed an interim legal measure to ensure that providers of electronic communications services could continue their current voluntary practices to detect in their systems child sexual abuse after 21 December 2020. This legal measure created a temporary and strictly limited derogation from the application of certain provisions of the e-Privacy Directive for the sole purpose of detecting and reporting child sexual abuse online and removing child sexual abuse materials from the services of providers. This legislation will expire on 3 August 2024.
  • In a second stage, on 11 May 2022, the Commission proposed a Regulation on preventing and combatting the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children to tackle child sexual abuse online effectively including by requiring relevant online services providers to detect known and unknown child sexual abuse material and grooming and require them to report them to public authorities.
• The Commission carried out an evaluation and back-to-back impact assessment of the EU Directive 2011/93/EU on combating child sexual abuse, sexual exploitation and child pornography to identify legislative gaps, best practices and priority actions at EU level in the fight against child sexual abuse online and offline. This work will result in a proposal for a Recast of Directive 2011/93/EU with targeted changes to tackle the issues highlighted by the evaluation and impact assessment to ensure this legislation is fit for purpose.

Actions focused on funding and cooperation:

• Provide funding to support the development of law enforcement capacity to keep up with technically-savvy abusers. Europol, supported by Commission funding, set up an Innovation Lab to facilitate the development of national capacity to remain abreast with technological developments and ensure an effective law enforcement response against child sexual abuse. Besides delivering common innovative technological solutions, the Lab provides strategic foresight on technology, consulting on ongoing and future innovation projects, identifies research and innovation initiatives in the area of technology, increases synergies and provides policy advice for EU stakeholders and decision-makers. Europol also hosts an EU Innovation Hub for Internal Security, a collaborative network of innovation labs from other EU agencies.
• The Commission has started work to create a prevention network at EU level to facilitate the exchange of best practices and support Member States in putting in place usable, rigorously evaluated and effective prevention measures to decrease the prevalence of child sexual abuse in the EU.
• The Commission has funded two specific actions in Portugal and Greece (currently under implementation) under Internal Security Fund aimed at launching preparatory activities at national level in anticipation of the cooperation envisaged under the new EU legislation between these authorities and the EU Centre, in particular on the databases of indicators on the basis of which service providers would be required to detect child sexual abuse online. Under the EU Internet Forum, the Commission launched and completed an expert process with experts and industry to map and preliminarily assess possible technical solutions to detect and report child sexual abuse in end-to-end encrypted electronic communications, and to address regulatory and operational challenges and opportunities in the fight against these crimes. The results of this process were summarised in Annex 8 of the Impact Assessment Report accompanying the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council laying down rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse.
• The Commission will continue contributing to the development of global standards for the protection of children against sexual abuse by promoting multi-stakeholder cooperation through the WePROTECT Global Alliance, and through dedicated funding.

Take action if you accidentally encounter suspected child sexual abuse images or videos, including sexually explicit images of a child. You can report anonymously through the INHOPE network of hotlines.

According to the 2019 Eurobarometer, 21% who of respondents who stumbled upon such content contacted the police, while almost as many (20%) say they contacted the website or vendor. While this is an increase compared to previous years, there is room for improvement when it comes to reporting from Internet users.

Talk to your children about online safety. It is important to not only monitor and restrict the use of the Internet, but to have an open discussion about the risks of, for example, sharing nude photos. You can find more information on how to talk to children about being safe online on Europol pages dedicated to preventing child sexual abuse during COVID-19 pandemic, and the Say No! campaign.

Hotlines are available for individuals with a sexual interest in children to help them control their fantasies from becoming a destructive reality.

The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated the problem of child sexual abuse. During the lockdown, children were often more isolated and spent more time online often, sometimes without proper supervision from their parents and carers. This, together with the fact that sexual predators also spent more time online, put children at higher risk of becoming victim of online abuse such as grooming or sextortion.

There are indications that the demand for child sexual abuse material went up by 25% in some Member States. The US National Center for Missing Exploited Children (NCMEC) assessed 255,588 reports contained child sexual abuse imagery, 66% of them were hosted in a European country.

Europol, through its European Cybercrime Centre, has been monitoring the situation, and supporting the work of law enforcement inside and outside the EU. It has published a number of reports that provide a strategic overview of COVID-19 related crime. Recently it has released a report examining the sexual abuse and exploitation of children online and related offline crimes, with a particular focus on how offenders have used their time during confinement to increase children’s vulnerability.

Europol has also developed, in collaboration with international partners, Online Safety Advice for Parents and Carers to help keep children safe online during the pandemic.

The long-term effects that the pandemic has had on how offending patterns and the trends of consumption of child sexual abuse material is yet to be seen. Certainly, it has hastened the move towards broader online presences of both abusers and children.