More and more, children are spending time online, be it for play, learning or socialising. Parents and caregivers play a key role in helping children navigate the online world and to protect them from harm online. This harm includes online child sexual exploitation abuse, the fastest-growing form of violence against children. Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) such as sexual imagery depicting children, has seen an alarming increase. The Internet Watch Foundation found that webpages containing this type of imagery involving children aged 7-10 went from 5,000 in 2020 to 63,000 in 2022, indicating a massive increase of over 1000%.
End Violence grantee Canadian Centre for Child Protection’s (C3P)’s new report explores parents’ perspectives on CSAM and how this significantly impacts entire families. The report is based on surveys with 20 survivors’ parents from around the globe whose children have been involved in child abuse imagery.
The report reveals that beyond the devastating consequences for children subjected to being part of or involved in CSAM, these incidents also negatively impacted the whole family. Parenting approaches were often affected, with parents becoming hypervigilant, traumatised and having to navigate complex criminal justice and child protective systems where trauma and stigma is re-lived. Parents also experienced adverse physical, emotional, and psychological effects including post-traumatic stress disorder, losing trust in others, and living in a state of fear for their family’s safety.
Based on these insights, the report makes policy recommendations to curb CSAM and help children and families. These include recommending governments to invest in public health services that provide therapy to survivors as well as their families, mandate trauma-informed training and practices for child protection services and justice systems, and create regulatory frameworks to ensure tech companies do their part to prevent and respond to online child abuse.
Read the full report by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P) here.
Through its Safe Online initiative, End Violence has invested in solutions and knowledge to create a safe internet for children. Explore more grantee projects from the Fund around the world.
Image:© UNICEF/UN0415735/Babajanyan VII Photo
