More than 300 million children victims of online sexual abuse every year
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First global study of its kind exposes ‘staggering scale’ of crime, with one in nine men in the US admitting to the offence.
By Haroon Siddique
More than 300 million children across the globe are victims of online sexual exploitation and abuse each year, research suggests.
In what is believed to be the first global estimate of the scale of the crisis, researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that 12.6% of the world’s children have been victims of nonconsensual talking, sharing and exposure to sexual images and video in the past year, equivalent to about 302 million young people.
A similar proportion – 12.5% – had been subject to online solicitation, such as unwanted sexual talk that can include sexting, sexual questions and sexual act requests by adults or other youths.
Offences can also take the form of ‘sextortion’, where predators demand money from victims to keep images private, and abuse of AI deepfake technology.
The research suggested that the US is a particularly hig...
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