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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.
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    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.
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    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.
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    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.
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    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.
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    The psychological impacts of content moderation on content moderators: A qualitative study
    (Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 2023) Spence, R., Bifulco, A., Bradbury, P., Martellozzo, E., & DeMarco, J.
    Content moderation generally refers to the practice of monitoring user generated content and applying a set of rules defining what is acceptable. As a result, Content Moderators (CMs) are responsible for reviewing and removing harmful online material, which has the potential to cause psychological harm. However, little is known about the perceived impacts of the job. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 commercial CMs who were exposed to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) as part of their job. Interviews were analysed using framework analysis to investigate any psychological impacts. Results demonstrated that CMs manifested with a range of symptoms consistent with experiencing repeated trauma. This included experiencing intrusive thoughts of CSAM, triggered by situations with similar contexts to those encountered at work, avoidance of children and negative cognitive and emotional effects such as cynicism, anxiety and detachment. These symptoms fit into a framework of post traumatic and secondary traumatic stress and suggest CMs wellbeing and exposure to stressful stimuli may be comparable to professionals working in the emergency services or caring professions, such as social workers. These personnel are at heightened risk of various problems including compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma and burnout. Companies which employ moderators should learn from these comparable professions and provide psychoeducation and trauma-informed care to CMs which have been demonstrated to help mitigate these challenges.
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    Users of Online Child Sexual Abuse Material
    (Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 2023) Huikuri, S.
    Online communities on darknet contribute to sexual violence against children. They provide offender access to Child Sexual Abuse Material and to a group of peers that supports criminal activities. This article sheds light on online child sexual abusers and their justifications for Child Sexual Abuse (CSA). It describes different offender profiles and motivations for CSA, followed by a section on policing these offences. The article then lays out psychological models, such as cognitive distortions, that are used to understand pedophiles’ behavior. The discussion is complemented by direct citations from a darknet community of CSA offenders, showing that these models are not just theoretical considerations. The last part of the article concentrates on online communities of CSA offenders. It describes different types of members of such communities and explains how the communities support individual offenders and how they provide learning models that facilitate criminal behavior. The article concludes with a short reflection of its findings, including novel insights for investigators of these crimes and proposed venues for further research.
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    RESEARCH BRIEF: Trafficking of Males in the United States - Findings and Gaps
    (Center for Justice and Reconciliation at PPoint Loma Nazarene University, 2024) Richie-Zavaleta, A. C., & Aramburo, L. A.
    This research brief explores labor and sex trafficking of males in the United States emphasizing identified patterns of vulnerability, entrapment, reasons for challenges to disclose victimization and highlighted needs to narrow current gaps in practice and research.
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    The role of emotion recognition in the intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment: A multigenerational family study
    (Child Abuse & Neglect, 2024) Buisman, R. S., Compier-de Block, L. H., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., Pittner, K., van den Berg, L. J., Tollenaar, M. S., ... & Alink, L. R.
    Background Understanding how child maltreatment is passed down from one generation to the next is crucial for the development of intervention and prevention strategies that may break the cycle of child maltreatment. Changes in emotion recognition due to childhood maltreatment have repeatedly been found, and may underly the intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment. Objective In this study we, therefore, examined whether the ability to recognize emotions plays a role in the intergenerational transmission of child abuse and neglect. Participants and setting A total of 250 parents (104 males, 146 females) were included that participated in a three-generation family study. Method Participants completed an emotion recognition task in which they were presented with series of photographs that depicted the unfolding of facial expressions from neutrality to the peak emotions anger, fear, happiness, and sadness. Multi-informant measures were used to examine experienced and perpetrated child maltreatment. Results A history of abuse, but not neglect, predicted a shorter reaction time to identify fear and anger. In addition, parents who showed higher levels of neglectful behavior made more errors in identifying fear, whereas parents who showed higher levels of abusive behavior made more errors in identifying anger. Emotion recognition did not mediate the association between experienced and perpetrated child maltreatment. Conclusions Findings highlight the importance of distinguishing between abuse and neglect when investigating the precursors and sequalae of child maltreatment. In addition, the effectiveness of interventions that aim to break the cycle of abuse and neglect could be improved by better addressing the specific problems with emotion processing of abusive and neglectful parents.
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    Examination of protective factors that promote prosocial skill development among children exposed to intimate partner violence
    (Development and Psychopathology, 2024) Holmes, M. R., Bender, A. E., Yoon, S., Berg, K. A., Duda-Banwar, J., Chen, Y., ... & Perzynski, A. T.
    This retrospective cohort study examined prosocial skills development in child welfare-involved children, how intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure explained heterogeneity in children’s trajectories of prosocial skill development, and the degree to which protective factors across children’s ecologies promoted prosocial skill development. Data were from 1,678 children from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being I, collected between 1999 and 2007. Cohort-sequential growth mixture models were estimated to identify patterns of prosocial skill development between the ages of 3 to 10 years. Four diverse pathways were identified, including two groups that started high (high subtle decreasing; high decreasing-to-increasing) and two groups that started low (low stable; low increasing-to-decreasing). Children with prior history of child welfare involvement, preschool-age IPV exposure, school-age IPV exposure, or family income below the federal poverty level had higher odds of being in the high decreasing-to-increasing group compared with the high subtle-decreasing group. Children with a mother with greater than high school education or higher maternal responsiveness had higher odds of being in the low increasing-to-decreasing group compared with the low stable group. The importance of maternal responsiveness in fostering prosocial skill development underlines the need for further assessment and intervention. Recommendations for clinical assessment and parenting programs are provided.
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    US Pediatricians’ Attitudes, Beliefs, and Perceived Injunctive Norms About Spanking
    (Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 2018) Taylor, C. A., Fleckman, J. M., Scholer, S. J., & Branco, N.
    Objective: To assess United States pediatricians’ attitudes, beliefs, and perceived professional injunctive norms regarding spanking. Method: A self-administered questionnaire was mailed to a nationwide random sample of 1500 pediatricians in the US, drawn from a database maintained by IMS Health. Four survey mailings were conducted and cash incentives of up to $20 were provided. The response rate was 53% (N 5 787). Results: Most respondents were members of the American Academy of Pediatrics (85%), had been practicing physicians for 15 years or more (66%), and were white (69%) and female (59%). All US regions were represented. About 3-quarters of pediatricians did not support the use of spanking, and most perceived that their colleagues did not support its use either. Pediatricians who were male, black, and/or sometimes spanked as children had more positive attitudes toward spanking and expected more positive outcomes from spanking than their counterparts. Nearly 80% of pediatricians never or seldom expected positive outcomes from spanking, and a majority (64%) expected negative outcomes some of the time. Conclusion: The majority of pediatricians in the US do not support the use of spanking with children and are aware of the empirical evidence linking spanking with increased risk of poor health outcomes for children. Pediatricians are a key, trusted professional source in advising parents about child discipline. These findings suggest that most pediatricians will discourage the use of spanking with children, which over time could reduce its use and associated harms in the population. This is of clinical relevance because, despite strong and consistent evidence of the harms that spanking raises for children, spanking is still broadly accepted and practiced in the US
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    Female-Perpetrated Child Sexual Abuse: A Vignette Study Investigating Professionals' Gender-Related Perception Bias and the Influence of an E-Learning Course
    (International Journal on Child Maltreatment: Research, Policy and Practice, 2024) Gerke, J., Öttl, P., König, E., Fegert, J. M., Hoffmann, U., & Rassenhofer, M.
    The attitude of professionals towards victims’ disclosures of child sexual abuse has a decisive influence on the well-being of the victims. However, both vignette studies as well as victim surveys suggest that professionals’ perception on sexual abuse is influenced, among other factors, by the perpetrators’ gender. The present analysis investigates whether professionals’ perception of sexual abuse is influenced by the perpetrators’ gender, the professionals’ gender as well as their experience and field of profession. Additionally, the effect of an e-learning course was examined. As part of an e-learning course on child sexual abuse, N = 1925 German professionals (social work, educational, medical-therapeutic, legal professionals) were presented with pre- and post-editing vignettes differing in the perpetrators’ gender and the ambiguity of the situation. The professionals had to rate the situations in terms of sexual abusiveness. The findings revealed that the same situation would be more likely classified as abusive when the perpetrator was male, particularly in ambiguous situations. Moreover, work experience, personal experiences with sexual abuse, and awareness of sexual abuse had significant positive relationships with the professionals’ rating of the abusiveness of a situation. An effect of training was identified, with situations being more likely rated as abusive after the course, specifically in cases with female perpetrators. Victims of female-perpetrated sexual abuse are still often disbelieved, and their experiences trivialized because professionals perceive violence by women differently due to gender stereotypes and a lack of knowledge on female-perpetrated violence. This study highlights the important effect of training. Both science and professional practice need to increase knowledge about female-perpetrated child sexual abuse, as it remains a taboo topic.
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    "An Examination of Sex Differences on Neurocognitive Functioning and Behavior Problems in Maltreated Youth"
    (Psychological trauma: Theory, research, practice, and policy, 2018) Nooner, K. B., Hooper, S. R., & De Bellis, M. D.
    Objective: In the developmental traumatology model, the biological construct of sex is considered a moderator that may negatively influence child maltreatment sequelae including those pertaining to neurocognitive function. Method: This study examined sex-differences in neurocognitive function and behavior problems in maltreated boys (n=42), maltreated girls (n=56) versus non-maltreated boys (n=45) and girls (n=59). Maltreated boys were hypothesized to have poorer neurocognitive functioning than maltreated girls, and non-maltreated boys and girls, in all neurocognitive domains, particularly pertaining to executive function and attention. We also examined correlations between cognitive function and parent report of child behavior problems for maltreated and non-maltreated children. Results: Maltreated boys performed more poorly on measures of intelligence, attention, language, memory, executive function, and academic achievement in both reading and math than non-maltreated boys. Maltreated boys did not perform more poorly on these cognitive measures or behavioral measures than maltreated girls, except for one memory measure. Maltreated girls performed more poorly on measures of intelligence, language, memory, executive function, and academic achievement than nonmaltreated girls. Maltreated girls with better visual-spatial skills had more internalizing and externalizing problems. Effect sizes for these sex differences ranged from small to large. Conclusions: Both maltreated boys and girls showed poorer cognitive function than their nonmaltreated sex-matched controls. Maltreated girls had subtle sparing of attention and short-term memory. Understanding sex differences in neurocognitive functioning may have implications for designing large population studies of maltreated youth.
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    Opioid overdose events and child maltreatment indicators: Differential county-level associations
    (Children and youth services review, 2020) Rebbe, R., Bishop, A. S., Ahn, J., & Mienko, J. A.
    The purpose of this study is to examine the association between county-level opioid overdose event rates and child maltreatment indicators. Specifically, study aims include examining associations between county-level opioid overdose event rates in Washington State, as measured by hospitalizations and deaths, with rates of CPS 1) intakes, 2) substantiations, 3) out-of-home placements, and 4) maltreatment-related hospitalizations. Our study builds on and extends previous research in two key ways. First, we focus on opioid overdose events specifically. By disaggregating opioids from general parental substance (ab)use, we can clarify the specific impact of the opioid epidemic on the child welfare system. Second, we use repeated and more nuanced measures of opioid overdoses events, CPS involvement, and child maltreatment over an extended period of time to capture a more precise and accurate picture of temporal associations.
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    Types of child maltreatment and child welfare involvement among opioid-using mothers involved in substance use treatment
    (Children and youth services review, 2021) Moreland, A., Newman, C., Crum, K. I., & Are, F.
    Although there is a significant link between maternal substance use and child maltreatment risk, extant literature has not investigated this link specifically among the growing number of parents abusing opioids. Underreporting of opioid use within child welfare presents further challenges in elucidating relations between maternal opioid use and child maltreatment. The purpose of the current study is to examine the link between maternal opioid use in women in substance use treatment and self-reported rates of child maltreatment and child welfare involvement of their children. We examined maternal substance use, severity of substance use, severity and type of child maltreatment of their children, and child welfare involvement across mothers who misuse opioids and misuse other substances using self-report surveys with 89 mothers. Results suggest similarities and differences among mothers who use opioids and other substances. Mothers who use opioids endorsed more significant and prolonged involvement with child welfare than mothers who use other substances. Participants did not endorse significant differences between rates of child maltreatment, and treatment engagement across groups. Given increased awareness of significant risks associated with opioid abuse, including greater risk for child maltreatment, a better understanding of its intersection with child welfare is necessary.
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    Sexual abuse and exploitation of children in cyberspace: Current challenges for European criminal policy
    (Biuletyn Kryminologiczny, 2024) Jakubczak-Fopke, K
    With the increasing development of technology and the spread of internet access, an increasing number of children have been exposed to sexual abuse in cyberspace. Recent events – including the COVID-19 pandemic and the transfer of many everyday activities to the internet – have further increased the risk of exposure to objectionable sexual behaviour. The purpose of the article is to discuss current challenges for European criminal policy in preventing and combating sexual crime, which is seen as one of the greatest threats to children in the 21st century. The author highlights the scope of the phenomenon in European countries, the emergence of new forms of exploitation, the rise of CSAM/CSEM materials and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The article also addresses proposed changes to the law, including the assumptions of the Strategy for the Rights of the Child and the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council Establishing Rules to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse.
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    The relationship between parental awareness of sexual abuse and children’s skills to say “no”
    (Anales de Pediatría, 2024) Kırbaş, Z. Ö., & Şahin, E.
    Introduction Child sexual abuse is a global and multidimensional social problem and causes devastating and permanent psychological, emotional, cognitive, behavioural, physical, sexual and interpersonal sequelae. This study examines the relationship between the ability to say “no” and parental awareness of sexual abuse in 4th grade primary school students. Methods The study was conducted between April 2022 and June 2022 in primary schools in the central district of a province in north-eastern Turkey. The sample consisted of 310 students enrolled in 4th grade and their parents. We collected the data through a personal information form, the Ability to Say “No” Scale for Children and the Sexual Abuse Awareness Scale for Parents. Results There was a weak positive correlation between the mean maternal scores of sexual abuse awareness and the mean scores of refusal and resistance in children (P < .05), as well as a weak positive correlation between the mean paternal scores of sexual abuse awareness and the mean scores of refusal and resistance in children (P < .05). Conclusion As mothers’ and fathers’ awareness of sexual abuse myths and of teachings and actions to combat sexual abuse increased, the refusal of children also increased. Also, as fathers’ awareness of the signs of sexual abuse increased, children’s refusal increased.
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    Navigating, being tricked, and blaming oneself—A metasynthesis of youth's experience of involvement in online child sexual abuse
    (Child & Family Social Work, 2024) Stänicke, L. I., Reiremo, G. K., Scheie, S. I., Jessen, R. S., & Jensen, T. K.
    Social media use is an integrated part of youth's social life, enabling access to knowledge and social exploration, but it also increases the risk of experiencing online child sexual abuse (OCSA). Quantitative reviews of OCSA provide insights into prevalence, risk factors, and mental health outcomes, but we have limited knowledge about how youth experience OCSA. This study aims to synthesize qualitative studies on youth's (12–24 years of age) first-person experiences of OCSA. We conducted a systematic database search and included 16 studies. The meta-synthesis resulted in three metathemes: (1) “Navigating in a digital world – feeling safe and understood,” (2) “Being lured, tricked, and caught up in online child sexual abuse,” and (3) “Facing the consequences – feeling powerless and blaming oneself.” Although the studies included most females, findings apply to all genders and across ages. The results highlight how online sexual engagement is a way to explore social and sexual relationships and address a basic need to be understood and supported. However, when trust is misused, developmental tasks related to autonomy and agency may be shattered, replaced with shame and self-blame. These findings point to the need to openly and nonjudgementally address OCSA so that it can be disclosed, and the psychological impact can be addressed.
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    The Risk of Online Sexual Abuse (ROSA) Project
    (The Lucy Faithfull Foundation, 2022) Vaswani, N., Mullen, L., Efthymiadou, E., & Allardyce, S.
    This paper describes the work of the ROSA Project and summarises the findings of the independent evaluation. For the purposes of the Faithfull Paper, the report also includes some secondary analyses of young people’s behaviour and supplementary materials not included in the independent evaluation. In particular, this report describes findings in relation to young people we worked with directly as part of this project. Findings from this project were used to inform a second part of the project, working at a secondary school in Glasgow (Shawlands Academy) with pupils, staff and parents to develop and share key knowledge, skills and messages about online safety and TA-HSB. We built on what we learnt from the direct work with young people who had displayed TA-HSB to develop a whole-school approach to preventing peer-on-peer online sexually abusive behaviour. The prevention work in the school is described in the appendix.