Childlight uncovers Scottish online abuse numbers

Around 150,000 children in Scotland have been subjected to at least one form of online sexual abuse in the past year, according to new estimates by the Childlight Global Child Safety Institute.

Amounting to an average of over 400 Scottish cases every day, the figures are more than 70 times higher than the number of cyber-enabled sexual crimes against children recorded by police.

Childlight, hosted by the University of Edinburgh and established by the Human Dignity Foundation (HDF), says Police Scotland is playing a vital role in holding perpetrators to account and preventing further abuse against children.

However, it says the gap between victim estimates and police data on recorded Scottish cases is also evidence that the pandemic is too big for law enforcement alone. It believes the “pandemic” can be ended with more emphasis on preventive measures, including around education, regulation and global collaboration.

The estimates, produced as part of a project funded by the Scottish Institute for Policing Research and Human Dignity Foundation, focus on how to build successful academic-policing data partnerships. They draw from Childlight’s Into The Light project, which examines the prevalence of online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA).

Childlight’s Director of Data, Professor Deborah Fry, says the research should be useful to policy makers and practitioners. She added that police only “see the tip of the iceberg”, adding: “We know from all the research we’ve done that many children will never tell anyone and the abuse will remain hidden.”

Paul Stanfield, Chief Executive of Childlight, tells Scotland Tonight: “I’ve been approached by people who have kept [experiences of child abuse] to themselves for over 50 years. They’re not going to the police to report it, but they’re telling me and they’re only beginning to tell their families today after 50 years.

“Unfortunately at the moment, because there’s no regulation on the internet, it really is the Wild West – anything goes. [Social media is] a key enabler and [offending has] grown exponentially as a result of it. Child sex offenders have been provided with a platform by which they can come together.”

When the Scottish population of 755,914* children aged 5-17 is applied to data collected across Western Europe, 150,000 children are estimated to have been victims of non-consensual taking, sharing or exposure to sexual images and videos in the past year. That’s enough children to fill Hampden stadium almost three times over.

Childlight also estimates that nearly 90,000 children in Scotland (12%) have experienced online solicitation in the past year, such as unwanted sexual talk which can include non-consensual sexting, unwanted sexual questions and unwanted sexual act requests by adults or other youths. In contrast, only 2,055** cases of online CSEA were reported to Police Scotland between April 2023 and March 2024 – just as many other crimes go unreported.

Online CSEA can take many forms, including sexual extortion, where predators blackmail victims, demanding money to keep images private, and A.I.-generated deepfake images. Based on a representative sample of men from the UK, 7% of men reported engaging in online sexual offending behaviours with children during their lifetime. Based on this perpetrator date, Childlight estimates:

• 2.9% – or over 76,000 men in Scotland – have deliberately viewed child sexual abuse material online at some point in their adulthood.
• At least 3.7% – nearly 100,000 Scottish men – will have flirted or had sexual conversations with a child under 18 online.
• At least 1.4% – or nearly 37,000 Scottish men – have engaged in sexually explicit webcamming with a child under the age of 18.
• 2% – or nearly 53,000 Scottish men – have paid for online sexual interactions, images or videos involving children under the age of 18.

Childlight says these figures are very likely to be underestimated as they rely on the self-report of men completing a general representative community survey about their online behaviours.

It says police play a vital role in holding perpetrators to account, ensuring they cannot act with impunity and go on to abuse more children. It notes that Alexander McCartney, who abused at least 70 children online and drove one girl to suicide, was caught after a 13-year-old girl reported him to Police Scotland – triggering a global investigation that led to a life sentence.

It says children need to know that police can help bring perpetrators to justice and that alerting them could also help many other victims. But it says the scale of the problem means it is not one police can arrest their way out of. Prevention reduces the human cost to children and wider societal costs as well as the financial costs to government. It says a prevention-focused public health approach, benefiting from educational interventions, online regulation and global partnerships, could make a huge difference for children.