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Child Maltreatment 2022
(U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau., 2024) U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau.
Child Maltreatment 2022 presents national data about child abuse and neglect known to
child protective services (CPS) agencies in the United States during federal fiscal year (FFY)
2022. The data is collected and analyzed through the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data
System (NCANDS), which is an initiative of the Children’s Bureau.
What Frontline Professionals Need to Combat Child Maltreatment Online
(International Journal on Child Maltreatment: Research, Policy and Practice, 2023) Binford, W.
Rapid technological advances in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have changed the landscape of child maltreatment worldwide. Whereas historically a child was most likely to be maltreated within the family or community systems, now children can be abused by thousands of unknown and unidentified persons from anywhere on the planet. Trafficking in child sexual abuse material (CSAM), luring, grooming, and other predatory behaviors existed before the Internet. However, modern technologies have changed abusers’ points of access to children and the number of abusers who can participate in the maltreatment of a victim. New types of child maltreatment are also being invented with new technologies, such as livestreamed child sexual exploitation. In addition, the volume of certain types of child abuse has exploded exponentially such as has been documented with the trafficking in CSAM, as well as the severity of the abuse being recorded on younger and younger victims, including infants and toddlers. These changes have created challenges at all points along the child maltreatment continuum—from prevention to effective treatment leading to the full physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of victims and survivors as are mandated by international law for many survivors. Recent research into the experiences and perspectives of frontline professionals combatting technology-facilitated child maltreatment makes clear that more training and supports are needed, such as technological resources, research into effective therapeutic treatments for survivors, consistent and accurate terminology and concepts, a modernization of the legal framework in which these crimes are investigated and prosecuted, and robust mental health supports for frontline providers. As the Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse and Neglect provides education and training to thousands of frontline providers worldwide each year, Kempe is uniquely situated to provide leadership in preparing frontline providers to combat child abuse effectively in these new environments.
Parental production of child sexual abuse material: A critical review
(Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 2023) Salter, M., & Wong, T.
The aim of this review is to summarize the available empirical research on parental production and to explore the discursive
positioning of parental perpetrators within scholarship on child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Academic databases were
searched using a combination of relevant terms, and the review was expanded as new terms were identified. The review
identified 66 scholarly articles, papers, or books that referred to parental production of CSAM published since 1970. To
explore how parental offenders have been positioned within this literature over time, the review is presented according to a
chronological summary, drawing out key themes and empirical insights. The review showed that parental CSAM production is
common, more likely to involve pre-pubescent victims, more severe abuse, female as well as male perpetrators, and produces
high-demand illegal content with serious long-term sequelae. However, the review found that the focus of child trafficking
and sexual exploitation scholarship on “commercial” and profit-driven abuse has marginalized and obscured parental CSAM
production as a serious policy challenge. These findings warrant a reorientation of research, policy, and practice approaches
to technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation, as well as a reflection on the resistance of researchers and policymakers
to acknowledging the problem of family-based sexual exploitation.
Discovering child sexual abuse material creators' behaviors and preferences on the dark web
(Child Abuse & Neglect, 2024) Ngo, V. M., Gajula, R., Thorpe, C., & Mckeever, S.
Background: Producing, distributing or discussing child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) is often committed
through the dark web in order to remain hidden from search engines and regular users. Additionally, on the
dark web, the CSAM creators employ various techniques to avoid detection and conceal their activities. The
large volume of CSAM on the dark web presents a global social problem and poses a significant challenge
for helplines, hotlines and law enforcement agencies.
Objective: Identifying CSAM discussions on the dark web and uncovering associated metadata insights into
characteristics, behaviours and motivation of CSAM creators.
Participants and Setting: We have conducted an analysis of more than 353,000 posts generated by 35,400
distinct users and written in 118 different languages across eight dark web forums in 2022. Out of these,
approximately 221,000 posts were written in English and contributed by around 29,500 unique users.
Method: We propose a CSAM detection intelligence system. The system uses a manually labelled dataset
to train, evaluate and select an efficient CSAM classification model. Once we identify CSAM creators and
victims through CSAM posts on the dark web, we proceed to analyze, visualize and uncover information
concerning the behaviors of CSAM creators and victims.
Result: The CSAM classifier, based on Support Vector Machine model, exhibited good performance, achieving the highest precision of 92.3%, accuracy of 87.6% and recall of 84.2%. Its prediction time is fast, taking
only 0.3 milliseconds to process a single post on our laptop. While, the Naive Bayes combination is the
best in term of recall, achieving 89%, and its prediction time is just 0.1 microseconds per post. Across the
eight forums in 2022, our Support Vector Machine model detected around 63,000 English CSAM posts and
identified near 10,500 English CSAM creators. The analysis of metadata of CSAM posts revealed meaningful
information about CSAM creators and their victims, such as: (1) the ages and nationalities of the victims
typically mentioned by CSAM creators, (2) forum topics where the CSAM creators assign their posts, and
(3) online platforms preferred by CSAM creators for sharing or uploading CSAM.
Conclusion: Our CSAM detection system exhibits high performance in precision, recall, and accuracy in
real-time when classifying CSAM and non-CSAM posts. Additionally, it can extract and visualize valuable
and unique insights about CSAM creators and victims by employing advanced statistical methods. These
insights prove beneficial to our partners, i.e. national hotlines and child agencies.
Exploring the uncomfortable topic of women who engage in child sexual abuse material offenses: how are they represented in the media?.
(Sexualities, 2023) Christensen, L. S.
The representation of women who engage in child sexual abuse material (CSAM) offenses
in the media is important to understand because the misconstruction of offending may
marginalize victims of these offenses and stymie the reporting by victims. The current
study aimed to explore how women who perpetrate CSAM offenses are represented in
the media. A search of all newspaper articles reporting CSAM offenses perpetrated by
women published in English over a 6-month period (1 May 2020 to 31 October 2020) was
conducted (N = 68 articles). A qualitative content analysis identified three themes: (1)
newspaper headings do not suggest women, including mothers, engage in CSAM offending; (2) women who co-offend are actively involved in the CSAM offending; and (3)
CSAM cases perpetrated by women are reported factually as opposed to emotively.
Overall, the findings are positive, indicating advancements in the factual, as opposed to
stereotypical, reporting of women who engage in CSAM offenses.