The sexual exploitation and abuse of children (CSEA) has become a multibillion-United States Dollar ($) global trade. The chilling reality of this profit-driven, highly lucrative industry is laid bare by new findings at the University of Edinburgh’s Childlight Global Child Safety Institute, Scotland.

The new report shows that CSEA is not just a crime restricted to a hidden corner of the dark web. Based on a review of 20 publications across multiple disciplines (including big data reports, systematic reviews, discussion papers and qualitative studies), the report paints a picture of the financial mechanisms enabling abuse on a global scale.

Previous work estimated that 3.5% of children globally had experienced sexual extortion in the last year. This is when children and their families face threats to share sexual content of a child if they do not comply with monetary demands.

Offenders are not the only ones who profit. Financial institutions, tech companies and online payment platforms — sometimes unknowingly, sometimes by omission — facilitate the flow of profits made from the abuse of children. Some of the money moves through legitimate payment systems and advertising revenue streams. Other financial flows are deliberately obscured through cryptocurrencies and the dark web.

Many organisations do take proactive steps to detect and report this activity. A global network of hotlines, Inhope works with law enforcement and tech companies to remove CSA material and disrupt the associated financial streams. And the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in the US receives and acts on reports from tech companies of CSA material, alerting companies and authorities to suspicious financial activity.

But, these systems remain inadequately checked or challenged by financial regulators and laws.

Sexual extortion has also spawned the creation of companies that provide cybersecurity and reputation management services to victims to combat the extorters. Fees are often paid upfront and can amount to thousands of dollars. In effect, this forces victims to pay for a solution to the crime committed against them.

There is also a market for the sale of CSA material, both recorded and live streamed, delivering profit for the offender and the systems that they use. One video file of on-demand CSA can cost $ 1,200. With the estimated prevalence of technology-facilitated abuse experienced by 300 million children annually, this is a massive industry.

The scale of profit is staggering, in contrast with the price that some perpetrators pay to sexually abuse children. One particularly haunting finding is abusers paying as little as United Kingdom Pence 27 to offend against children.

Taken together, the industry is estimated to reach multiple billions of dollars annually.

While the financial value placed on a child may be measured in pennies, the lifelong cost to that child in trauma, health and opportunity is incalculable. It is a grotesque marketplace where the takings are vast and the suffering is immeasurable.

The findings also expose how perpetrators themselves are rapidly changing their approach, constantly exploiting gaps in legislation and regulatory frameworks to continue harming children.

For example, in the Philippines, a live streaming hotspot, it is found that technology is enabling large organised crime syndicates to be replaced by smaller, covert groups. Often operating within families, these perpetrators have profited as crime shifts online, facilitated by cryptocurrency and digital payment systems.

The proliferation and growing sophistication of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has also opened troubling new frontiers. Child abusers can now produce realistic AI-generated CSA material, using the photos of real children in order to extort. This can make detection harder and muddy the water in terms of legal accountability. Many jurisdictions are still playing catch-up.

The world’s financial and tech infrastructure — knowingly or unknowingly — has become complicit in sustaining these crimes. In some cases, advertising revenue generated from abusive content on mainstream platforms flows back into criminal networks with little-to-no intervention. Cryptocurrencies allow for rapid and anonymous transfers of payment between perpetrators and content creators.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to preventing CSE, and the changing nature of the market and technology makes it even harder.

One promising measure is the use of blocklists — lists of known CSA material that, once identified, can be blocked across major internet service providers. These lists compiled and shared by organisations including the Internet Watch Foundation are proving invaluable in stopping people from accessing abuse material.

However, even here, the findings are disturbing. On average, there are five attempts per second globally to access material that has already been placed on these blocklists.

We need to start addressing CSEA as a public health emergency, with a coordinated response to halt its growth. This requires not just reactive law enforcement measures, but proactive prevention strategies that tackle the financial and technological ecosystems that sustain the abuse. For example, imposing regulation and sanctions on financial institutions that do not take appropriate steps to prevent their services being exploited.

(The Conversation)