Child Sexual Abuse Images Online: Confronting the Problem

Abstract

This Special Issue stems from the international symposium, “Child Sexual Abuse Images Online: Confronting the Problem—Research, Policy, Practice,” which was held at Ryerson University in June 2014 with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The collection of papers in the Issue focus on child sexual abuse images online from the perspectives of children's mental health, child protection, and law enforcement. The symposium brought together local and international academics, policymakers, child advocates, practitioners, law enforcement officers, child welfare workers, and other key stakeholders who assume various roles and responsibilities in responding to child sexual abuse. Over two days we shared knowledge, experiences, and insights related to the role of technology in child sexual abuse; specifically the implications of child sexual abuse images online. Through presentations, panel discussions, and round-table working group discussions, participants examined and shared current knowledge about child sexual abuse images online, identified key priorities, and determined critical strategies and vital next steps. The five articles in this Special Issue represent those cross-sectoral contributions. We thank the Editors of Child & Youth Services, Dr. Kiaras Gharabaghi and Dr. Ben Anderson-Nathe, for inviting us to develop a Special Issue for this journal based on the presentations made at the 2014 CSAIO Symposium. We also thank our external reviewers through whom all articles in this Issue were subjected to a rigorous blind peer review.

Technology has had a profound effect on child sexual abuse and exploitation; particularly the production, distribution, viewing, and collection of child sexual abuse images online (CSAIO). Our core understanding of CSAIO involves the “conventional” (non-Internet related) sexual abuse of a child that is digitally recorded and distributed online. However, some contributors to this Issue use a broader understanding of CSAIO, which includes images produced online (e.g., captured screenshots during a chat) and images produced by youth themselves. Two defining features of CSAIO, regardless of how broad the conceptualization, are their online accessibility and potential permanence. The millions of abuse images currently online are not hard to access by those with a sexual interest in children, and it is possible for CSAIO to be accessed online accidentally. Although attempts are being made in many countries to block websites or remove content, once online, an image can exist out of the subject's control for the remainder of his or her life.

Findings from Martin's recent research on practitioners’ understandings of CSAIO indicated that there is uncertainty about whether the additional dimension of online images needs to be addressed separately and additionally as a source of harm. (For similar findings in the German context, see von Weiler, Haardt-Becker, & Schulte, 2010.) The study findings also indicated a tendency among practitioners to focus on offline abuse as the most pressing issue, sometimes to the neglect of online sources of harm. This focus is also reflected in law enforcement's emphasis on prioritizing prosecutions of child pornography offenders who are deemed to pose the highest risk of present or future contact sexual offences against children.

The phenomenon of CSAIO is a critical social problem with serious implications, including the violation of children's rights. Rather than a primary consideration, however, the protection of children made the subjects of CSAIO appears to be an afterthought to the principles guiding society's acceptance of the cyber world. Societal attitudes continue to deny or downplay the impact of the abuse on the child; adult rights, rather than the protection of children, still appear to be guiding much policy in relation to new digital technologies. Goddard and Hunt (2011) argued “the silencing of children represents a longstanding and persistent defensive societal denial of the extent and seriousness of child abuse.” This “silencing” has been extended to include online abuse via CSAIO.

Integrating an awareness of cyberspace in police and child welfare investigations and in clinical assessments of child sexual abuse would increase the likelihood that the involvement of technology will be probed and that children suffering online harms will be helped. Moreover, practitioners across sectors require assessment protocols that are specific to CSAIO and that consider the potential of the Internet in child sexual abuse cases. Digital technology has added a new dimension to conventional child sexual abuse that is pertinent to each case of suspected abuse; yet, this aspect is not consistently considered by practitioners in the field and is barely touched on by existing research.

As Martin has explained in greater detail elsewhere (Martin, 2013; Martin & Alaggia, 2013), extending Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ecological systems framework to include cyberspace as an ecological system (cybersystem) of influence on the child helps explain how the environment, including the online environment, can perpetuate and escalate the harms done to children made subjects of sexual abuse images online. The intention of integrating an awareness of cyberspace in investigations and assessments of child sexual abuse is to increase the likelihood that the involvement of technology, specifically the Internet, will be probed. Therefore, as you read the articles that comprise this Special Issue, we encourage you to consider Martin's contemporary ecological–cyber systems framework (Figure 1) to better understand CSAIO as a social issue that influences and is influenced by the social environment, and to ensure that the phenomenon is not understood in isolation of other social and cultural factors and contexts (see also Quayle & Cooper, this volume, for discussion of an ecological approach).

Figure 1 Ecological–cyber systems model (adapted from Bronfenbrenner, 1979, and Johnson & Puplampu 2008; see also Martin, 2013, 2014; Martin & Alaggia, 2013).

A significant phenomenon that emerged from the symposium and is reflected in the papers submitted to this Special Issue concerns the status of youth self-produced sexual images distributed online: that is, whether they are included under the same concerns as core CSAIO. Including such images raises questions about whether an image that does not depict sexual abuse requires the same treatment and assessment strategies of the young people pictured in them or the same legal responses. During the symposium, discussion often moved away from core CSAIO toward concerns about “sexting” (youth sending sexual pictures of themselves to others) and educating teens about the risks of doing so. Although some practitioners in Martin's study felt that digitally immersed youth may not be as sensitive to online images circulating as previous generations, there was a strong sense among attendees at the symposium that non-consensual circulation of such sexual images on the Internet caused harm to the young people pictured; begging further exploration of the degree of overlap between the experiences of these victims and those who are victims of core CSAIO.

We were puzzled by the consistency with which conversation at the symposium drifted from core CSAIO to sexting, given that most of the attendees were practitioners specializing in child sexual abuse. We had expected the audience to be more squarely focused on core CSAIO throughout, though certainly public attention (from the media, as well as from scholars) also seems to be more recently occupied with the phenomenon of teen sexting than with core CSAIO. Reasons why this shift to sexting occurs include that core CSAIO, like child sexual abuse more generally, is an intractable problem. Practitioners and law enforcement personnel dealing with core CSAIO attempt to identify, protect, and treat the victims, but most are not identified and found. Sexting, on the other hand, seems to be something that is a more manageable problem: often the young people involved are known to one another and the distribution begins at least in a local social environment. The teens involved can be talked to, educated, and if need be provided treatment. Prevention programs can be implemented. This all makes sexting, as least unconsciously, an easier topic of discussion overall than core CSAIO.

We also have a cultural tendency to blame young people for their behaviors. We worry about them being victimized, but also worry about them acting out and committing acts of violence or aggression. David Finkelhor calls this dual phenomenon “juvenoia” (2011). As von Weiler's article in this issue suggests, although current social and technological trends have made taking and sending imagery of oneself more mainstream than ever before, when teens share sexualized “selfies,” it becomes an opportunity to tell young people what not to do, to threaten them with criminal charges, and to insist that they are masters of their own destiny. Core CSAIO, on the other hand, deals with situations where a child or young person has been sexually abused, usually by a trusted adult, and images of the abuse have been deliberately placed in a nefarious network of other adults who are all too eager to further objectify and consume them; the children in these images are not masters of their own destiny in any sense. The tendency to want to focus on sexting highlights the need for legal and clinical scholars and practitioners to consider differences and similarities between the experiences of teens and younger children, and the different contexts in which sexual images are taken and distributed.

Martin's article introduces this Special Issue by providing a unique conceptual model of CSAIO that considers the relationship between offline and online child sexual abuse and illustrates the complexity of possible harms done to children made the subject of CSAIO. These conceptualizations challenge existing trauma treatment modalities and call for research to expand trauma frameworks to move beyond symptom management and narrow temporal assumptions specifically for CSAIO. In Slane's contribution, the legal harms recognized as arising from simple possession and viewing of sexual images of young people are distinguished from the harms arising from the creation and distribution of a “permanent record of abuse”. These separate conceptualizations are intended to create a space for the possibility of shared harms that could arise both for victims of core CSAIO (where the images are records of sexual abuse) and for victims of non-consensual distribution (where the images were produced in a non-abusive context). Quayle's contribution further highlights the importance of coercion in distinguishing between harmful situations where teens self-produce sexual images and those that may not be harmful. von Weiler's contribution reviews studies she was involved in that examined CSAIO as a multi-faceted phenomenon, including the recommendation that practitioners need to understand why young people take risks online in order to provide appropriate support.

This Special Issue broadens our understanding of the complex nature of child sexual abuse images online, particularly the views expressed towards conceptualizing and understanding the harms done to children made the subjects of the abuse images. Specifically, this special issue draws attention to the need to clarify our understanding of the many facets of victims’ experiences and the challenges that practitioners and investigators face, as addressed by Sinclair in her contribution. We need sustained focus on identifying and addressing the knowledge gaps and barriers to cross-sectoral responses to CSAIO. While many key stakeholders are working to help children and protect them from online sexual abuse and exploitation, the full potential of their wealth of knowledge and ideas can only be realized if they are able to share their wisdom, research, experiences, and best practices together. A specific aim of the symposium, therefore, was to develop partnerships for collaborative work and research across sectors regarding best practices in response to child sexual abuse images online. We are pleased to have secured further funding from SSHRC to advance those partnerships and improve upon knowledge exchange between the sectors, to which all of the contributors to this Special Issue will contribute. Ultimately, our primary goal is to develop capacity among practitioners and investigators so that they are better informed about the potential effects of CSAIO and to inform development of assessment and treatment strategies that acknowledge them.

Jennifer Martin and Andrea Slane

Guest Editors

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors thank Linn Clark for excellent editing of this Special Issue.