A new analysis published today (April 21) in the annual report of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) shows the increasing risk of boys, particularly girls aged 11-13, being targeted by criminal sexual predators.
Predators groom, intimidate, and coerce their victims to film their own sexual abuse on Internet-enabled devices, often in children’s bedrooms in their family homes. Images and videos of this abuse are then widely shared online.
IWF experts, who work internationally to find and remove child sexual abuse material from the Internet, warn that this abuse now, for the first time, represents almost half of what they are finding online.
The IWF annual report reveals:

• In 2020, the IWF confirmed 68,000 cases of self-generated imaging . It now accounts for nearly half (44%) of the images the IWF took action on last year (IWF analysts confirmed 153,350 reports of child sexual abuse material in total).
• This is a 77% increase over the 2019 total reports of 38,400 that included “self-generated” material.
• New analysis is shown in In 80% of these cases, the victims were girls aged 11 to 13 years. .

Now a hard-hitting IWF campaign, backed by the UK Home Office and Microsoft, aims to empower girls and warn parents about the “dire” risks posed by online predators targeting children. kids.
Susie Hargreaves OBE, Executive Director of the IWF, said: “The scale of the problem is appalling, and our fear is that without intervention it will get worse and more and more girls will be victims of this pernicious and manipulative form of abuse.

“This is a crucial moment. With more people spending more time online, predators are finding new ways to contact and manipulate children who are, in many cases, a captive audience at home with their devices. The blockade has made things worse.

“Part of the campaign is shocking. But the threat and abuse are shocking. We don’t want to scare people, but we want to build resilience in the face of the threat of self-generated child sexual abuse. We want to help adolescent girls recognize actions that constitute self-generated sexual abuse as abuse.

“We want them to feel empowered to take control and understand how to deal with inappropriate requests and report them to a trusted source.”

For more information on this topic and advice, visit our Online Grooming and Sexting Hub .