While there is limited research regarding victims of child sexual abuse material, it is a growing field of research and study to better understand the child victims and the offenders.
In March 2018, two studies on this topic were released. The first study is Production and Active Trading of Child Sexual Exploitation Images Depicting Identified Victims, which is based on data collected by NCMEC’s Child Victim Identification Program through 2014. The second study is Towards a Global Indicator on Unidentified Victims in Child Sexual Exploitation Material5, which is based on data in Interpol’s global system.
Below are key findings from these two studies:
- Girls appear in the overwhelming majority of CSAM.1
- Prepubescent children are at the greatest risk to be depicted in CSAM.2
- When boys are victimized, they are much more likely than girls to be subjected to very explicit or egregious abuse.
- On average boys depicted in CSAM are younger than girls and more likely to have not yet reached puberty.3
- 78% of reports regarding online enticement4 involved girls and 15% involved boys (in 8% of reports, the gender of the child could not be determined).