Webinar explores the importance of preventative programmes and public health approaches to tackle child sexual abuse online

Prevention work is a crucial part of the response to tackle rising levels of child sexual abuse and exploitation online, yet many interventions focus on responding to abuse where it has already taken place.

In a webinar for Alliance members last week, two esteemed experts spoke about the importance of shifting towards a public health response to prevention and some of the ways this is being done in practice in Australia and the Netherlands.

Professor Michael Salter, Director of Childlight at the University of NSW in Australia, discussed how secondary prevention services form an important, but sometimes contentious, component of public health efforts to reduce the prevalence of child sexual abuse.

He talked about research showing a lack of psychological treatment options for people with a sexual interest in children who do not already have a conviction, and the links between sexual interest in children and experiences of poor mental health.

Michael spoke about the different service models and support programmes for people concerned about their risk to children. He presented insights on factors in adults wanting help for their feelings towards minors, as indicated by a survey of almost five thousand men across Australia, the US and the UK conducted by UNSW and the Stop It Now! Australia helpline. The findings are due to be published following the peer review phase of the research.

Addressing some of the policy barriers to setting up secondary prevention services, Michael talked about the dominance of the policing lens through which child sexual abuse is tackled in Australia, as well as the infancy of secondary prevention approaches.

“If we engage with young people early on in the pathway, we have a good chance of preventing offending. I would like to see this picked up as a public health priority. We don’t currently have enough practitioners with the specific training,” he said.

He also discussed the need for an improved societal understanding and mindset shift around perpetration.

“When delivering sexual education to young people, we need to be aware we are addressing a significant proportion of children who have already experienced abuse, as well as those who have themselves perpetrated or displayed harmful behaviour,” he said.

Michael also presented some facilitating factors which enable secondary prevention programmes to flourish, citing examples of strong collaborative action between sectors, co-design of service models and advocacy by law enforcement in the Australian context. 

Following this powerful presentation was a shift across continents to Europe. Robbert Hoving is the president of Offlimits, the coordinator of the Dutch Safer Internet Center and responsible for the implementation of the Better Internet for Kids Strategy of the Europeans Commission in The Netherlands.

Robbert talked about trends seen from the Meldpunt Kinderporno Hotline, where child sexual abuse material is reported in the Netherlands. The Hash Check Server – their tool that helps in taking known CSAM down from the internet –  processed a staggering 8 billion checks in 2023, resulting in 800,000 hits and thus close to a million known images were removed which could not hurt the victims anymore. (for more info: Home – HashCheckService)

He also presented insights from the Dutch helpline, Helpwanted, an anonymous helpline for online transgressive behaviour and the Stop It Now! Helpline in the Netherlands, for people worried about their feelings or behaviour towards minors. Both helplines saw the number of contacts increase in 2023 compared with 2022, which shows that there is a need for victims to be helped online.

Robbert discussed the need for a holistic approach to preventing harm, form educational tools and awareness through to research, legislation and collaboration to take harmful content offline and direct people to proper help. He also shared work Offlimits has been doing using pop up deterrent messages to protect both victims and perpetrators.

He also spoke about upcoming research looking at the behaviours of very young children taking explicit images of themselves  and those being shared online without them being aware. Next to their future work with the gaming industry. Robbert strongly reinforced the importance of education as a preventive strategy and highlighted the multi-faceted nature of this.

“At what age do we guide children online? We teach them to swim before they go in a pool. We also need to teach them to go online safely.

“In the Netherlands, one third of children who have experienced sexual abuse will never tell someone they have been abused. It’s important that when children recognise, ‘this has happened to me’, that they know who and where they can go to. The offender is likely to be someone they know, and they may well be a peer.

“Young people can also be offenders – we need to think about interventions in this space too,” he said.

If you are interested in future Alliance webinars, please visit our events page for more details.

Find out more information about  the Alliance’s work on developing a prevention framework and research.