Internet Watch Foundation research on child sex abuse live-streaming

Top lines from the study found:
• 96% of victims were girls.
• 96% showed a child on their own, in a home environment.
• 18% of the abuse was categorised as Category A, which includes the rape and sexual torture of children.
• 40% of the abuse was categorised as Category A or B, which indicates serious sexual abuse.
• 100% of images had been harvested from their original upload locations.

100% of the imagery had been harvested from the original upload location and had been redistributed on third party websites, with 73% of content appearing on 16 dedicated forums. This indicates the abusive imagery was being shared with the intention of advertising paid downloads of videos of webcam child sexual abuse.

40% of collected illegal imagery was confirmed as Category A (18 %; Images involving penetrative sexual activity with an animal or sadism) or B (Images involving non-penetrative sexual activity). The remainder was classed as Category C (Other indecent images not falling within categories A or B).

4 % of the live-streamed content was captured from mobile-only streaming apps.

The IWF is calling for greater awareness of online child sexual abuse using live-streaming apps. The organisation wants to encourage parents, carers and professionals working with youngsters to be aware of children's technology use and the dangers posed to them by offenders. Susie Hargreaves OBE, IWF CEO, said: "We know that these figures will be shocking to read. This is a trend we identified from our Hotline data and were deeply concerned about. (...) The report worked with over 2,000 cases where children had been, we believe, either groomed or coerced into live-streaming video of themselves, via their webcam, mobile or tablet. The backgrounds in the videos we studied, mostly showed that the youngsters were in very ordinary ‘home' settings - somewhere like their bedrooms, or a bathroom. Critically, no adult appeared to be present in the images we saw. Therefore, it's our belief that these children were being ‘directed' to abuse themselves and live-stream the sexual abuse. (...) We know that this information will be terrifying for most parents. That's why we are trying to warn parents, carers and professionals working with children, about the potential abuse of live steaming technology by offenders."

The study is available here in English.