Child sexual abuse videos and images of more than 50,000 children sit in a global law enforcement database. These children are seen, but their identities are unKNOWN. Through partnerships with law enforcement, we can work to identify and protect these children who have experienced the darkest of evils.

Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is the crime scene recording of the actual sexual abuse of a child. These photos and videos are shared, traded, and circulated across the internet. They memorialize a child’s worst moments.

Through our work in Anti-Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation, we have learned more about the growing problem of child sexual abuse material. We have collaborated closely with law enforcement and other agencies and witnessed firsthand the challenges they face in their tireless fight against this heinous crime. During an international gathering hosted by TTF in early 2023 with the world's top victim Identification experts, we learned that there are more than 50,000 boys and girls around the globe that law enforcement has seen in abuse images, but who have not been identified.

This database exists to allow countries to collaborate since online exploitation has no geographic boundaries. If Country A finds images from a lawful seizure during an arrest of children in another country, they are sent to this database. This database acts as a central repository for countries to locate children in their own communities. The internet has facilitated a global market for these images, and the demand for new images can only be met with new victims. Governments all over the world have not resourced law enforcement to a level where they can combat these crimes at scale.

The identification of these children presents a huge challenge, requiring highly skilled and trained analysts who can uncover the subtle clues within the images to determine the children’s identities and locations. The disparity in investigative resources, inadequate laws, access to technology, public education and awareness globally continues to be a significant issue. Only the most developed countries have dedicated cyber-crime units investigating this specific crime type, and even less have dedicated victim identification units. It has very much been the role of the developed nations to take the lead on this issue by both proactively identifying the children depicted in CSAM, and then getting that evidence to the relevant country. Even then, countries don’t have the proper resources to carry out the investigations and prosecutions of these cases. While law enforcement agencies are doing their utmost, they cannot keep up with the overwhelming scale of this crisis. Every nation should mandate and invest in changing their legal frameworks in addition to creating workforces to address this exponentially growing backlog of images and videos. TTF is dedicated to helping nations develop these specialized teams to do the work of victim identification, so these children can be identified and protected.

To understand the prevention of child sexual abuse material crimes, there first needs to be an understanding of the types of offenders who are committing these acts. For children whose images are actively traded across the internet – the majority of these children are being abused by family or people in their circle of trust. This abuse is then photographed or filmed. To prevent these crimes, we need to address the root cause of sex offending, like early childhood physical violence. We also need to believe children when they come forward and report sexual abuse. Child sexual abuse material producers have dozens of victims. If you stop one offender, you can prevent the abuse of dozens, sometimes hundreds of children. To prevent the online exploitation of children, both parents and children need to be equipped with tools to keep themselves safe online. Some online safety resources can be found here.

To prevent the accumulation of these unknown images, governments must increase investments in specially trained victim identification teams who have the expertise to do this type of child protection work.

At a time when child exploitation crimes have grown faster than any other crime type, many countries have decreased funding to law enforcement. TTF will step into this void and provide critical support for nations to collaborate, share best practices, and continue victim identification operational efforts around the world.

In March of 2024, TTF testified in front of Congress and told them about all of the children who are being abused and are waiting for rescue. Lawmakers are currently drafting legislation that will build a rescue team of analysts to locate and protect the children seen in sexually abusive imagery at the global level.  

Specifically, the bill will:

• Create a position focused exclusively on victim identification within law enforcement and the funding to deploy these analysts around the world.
• Expand Homeland Security Investigations and INTERPOL's world-class training capabilities to support this work globally
• Modernize the International Child Sexual Exploitation (ICSE) database so that law enforcement around the world can keep pace with this growing threat against children.