Child & Youth Services

ISSN: 0145-935X (Print) 1545-2298 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wcys20

Child Sexual Abuse Images Online: Confronting the

Problem

Jennifer Martin & Andrea Slane

To cite this article: Jennifer Martin & Andrea Slane (2015) Child Sexual Abuse
Images Online: Confronting the Problem, Child & Youth Services, 36:4, 261-266, DOI:
10.1080/0145935X.2015.1092828

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0145935X.2015.1092828

Accepted author version posted online: 23

Sep 2015.
Published online: 08 Dec 2015.

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 Child & Youth Services, 36:261266, 2015
Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0145-935X print/1545-2298 online
DOI: 10.1080/0145935X.2015.1092828

Guest Editorial
Child Sexual Abuse Images Online:
Confronting the Problem

JENNIFER MARTIN
School of Child & Youth Care, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

ANDREA SLANE
University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, Ontario, Canada
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This Special Issue stems from the international symposium, Child

Sexual Abuse Images Online: Confronting the ProblemResearch,
Policy, Practice, which was held at Ryerson University in June
2014 with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The collection of papers
in the Issue focus on child sexual abuse images online from the
perspectives of childrens mental health, child protection, and law
enforcement. The symposium brought together local and interna-
tional academics, policymakers, child advocates, practitioners, law
enforcement officers, child welfare workers, and other key stake-
holders who assume various roles and responsibilities in responding
to child sexual abuse. Over two days we shared knowledge, experi-
ences, and insights related to the role of technology in child sexual
abuse; specifically the implications of child sexual abuse images
online. Through presentations, panel discussions, and round-table
working group discussions, participants examined and shared cur-
rent knowledge about child sexual abuse images online, identified
key priorities, and determined critical strategies and vital next steps.
The five articles in this Special Issue represent those cross-sectoral
contributions. We thank the Editors of Child & Youth Services,
Dr. Kiaras Gharabaghi and Dr. Ben Anderson-Nathe, for inviting
us to develop a Special Issue for this journal based on the presen-
tations made at the 2014 CSAIO Symposium. We also thank our
external reviewers through whom all articles in this Issue were sub-
jected to a rigorous blind peer review.

Address correspondence to Dr. Jennifer Martin, School of Child & Youth Care, Ryerson
University, 350 Victoria Street, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada or Dr. Andrea Slane, University
of Ontario Institute of Technology, 2000 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa, ON, Canada L1H 7K4.
E-mail: jjmartin@ryerson.ca or andrea.slane@uoit.ca

261
 262 Guest Editorial

Technology has had a profound effect on child sexual abuse and exploita-
tion; particularly the production, distribution, viewing, and collection of child
sexual abuse images online (CSAIO). Our core understanding of CSAIO
involves the conventional (non-Internet related) sexual abuse of a child
that is digitally recorded and distributed online. However, some contribu-
tors to this Issue use a broader understanding of CSAIO, which includes
images produced online (e.g., captured screenshots during a chat) and
images produced by youth themselves. Two defining features of CSAIO,
regardless of how broad the conceptualization, are their online accessibility
and potential permanence. The millions of abuse images currently online
are not hard to access by those with a sexual interest in children, and it is
possible for CSAIO to be accessed online accidentally. Although attempts are
being made in many countries to block websites or remove content, once
online, an image can exist out of the subjects control for the remainder of
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his or her life.

Findings from Martins recent research on practitioners understandings
of CSAIO indicated that there is uncertainty about whether the additional
dimension of online images needs to be addressed separately and addition-
ally as a source of harm. (For similar findings in the German context, see von
Weiler, Haardt-Becker, & Schulte, 2010.) The study findings also indicated a
tendency among practitioners to focus on offline abuse as the most pressing
issue, sometimes to the neglect of online sources of harm. This focus is also
reflected in law enforcements emphasis on prioritizing prosecutions of child
pornography offenders who are deemed to pose the highest risk of present
or future contact sexual offences against children.
The phenomenon of CSAIO is a critical social problem with serious
implications, including the violation of childrens rights. Rather than a pri-
mary consideration, however, the protection of children made the subjects
of CSAIO appears to be an afterthought to the principles guiding societys
acceptance of the cyber world. Societal attitudes continue to deny or down-
play the impact of the abuse on the child; adult rights, rather than the
protection of children, still appear to be guiding much policy in relation to
new digital technologies. Goddard and Hunt (2011) argued the silencing
of children represents a longstanding and persistent defensive societal de-
nial of the extent and seriousness of child abuse. This silencing has been
extended to include online abuse via CSAIO.
Integrating an awareness of cyberspace in police and child welfare
investigations and in clinical assessments of child sexual abuse would in-
crease the likelihood that the involvement of technology will be probed and
that children suffering online harms will be helped. Moreover, practitioners
across sectors require assessment protocols that are specific to CSAIO and
that consider the potential of the Internet in child sexual abuse cases. Digital
technology has added a new dimension to conventional child sexual abuse
that is pertinent to each case of suspected abuse; yet, this aspect is not
 Guest Editorial 263
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FIGURE 1 Ecologicalcyber systems model (adapted from Bronfenbrenner, 1979, and

Johnson & Puplampu 2008; see also Martin, 2013, 2014; Martin & Alaggia, 2013).

consistently considered by practitioners in the field and is barely touched on

by existing research.
As Martin has explained in greater detail elsewhere (Martin, 2013;
Martin & Alaggia, 2013), extending Bronfenbrenners (1979) ecological sys-
tems framework to include cyberspace as an ecological system (cybersystem)
of influence on the child helps explain how the environment, including the
online environment, can perpetuate and escalate the harms done to children
made subjects of sexual abuse images online. The intention of integrat-
ing an awareness of cyberspace in investigations and assessments of child
sexual abuse is to increase the likelihood that the involvement of technol-
ogy, specifically the Internet, will be probed. Therefore, as you read the
articles that comprise this Special Issue, we encourage you to consider Mar-
tins contemporary ecologicalcyber systems framework (Figure 1) to better
understand CSAIO as a social issue that influences and is influenced by the
social environment, and to ensure that the phenomenon is not understood
in isolation of other social and cultural factors and contexts (see also Quayle
& Cooper, this volume, for discussion of an ecological approach).
 264 Guest Editorial

A significant phenomenon that emerged from the symposium and is

reflected in the papers submitted to this Special Issue concerns the status of
youth self-produced sexual images distributed online: that is, whether they
are included under the same concerns as core CSAIO. Including such images
raises questions about whether an image that does not depict sexual abuse
requires the same treatment and assessment strategies of the young people
pictured in them or the same legal responses. During the symposium, discus-
sion often moved away from core CSAIO toward concerns about sexting
(youth sending sexual pictures of themselves to others) and educating teens
about the risks of doing so. Although some practitioners in Martins study felt
that digitally immersed youth may not be as sensitive to online images cir-
culating as previous generations, there was a strong sense among attendees
at the symposium that non-consensual circulation of such sexual images on
the Internet caused harm to the young people pictured; begging further
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exploration of the degree of overlap between the experiences of these

victims and those who are victims of core CSAIO.
We were puzzled by the consistency with which conversation at the
symposium drifted from core CSAIO to sexting, given that most of the atten-
dees were practitioners specializing in child sexual abuse. We had expected
the audience to be more squarely focused on core CSAIO throughout, though
certainly public attention (from the media, as well as from scholars) also
seems to be more recently occupied with the phenomenon of teen sexting
than with core CSAIO. Reasons why this shift to sexting occurs include that
core CSAIO, like child sexual abuse more generally, is an intractable prob-
lem. Practitioners and law enforcement personnel dealing with core CSAIO
attempt to identify, protect, and treat the victims, but most are not identified
and found. Sexting, on the other hand, seems to be something that is a more
manageable problem: often the young people involved are known to one
another and the distribution begins at least in a local social environment.
The teens involved can be talked to, educated, and if need be provided
treatment. Prevention programs can be implemented. This all makes sexting,
as least unconsciously, an easier topic of discussion overall than core CSAIO.
We also have a cultural tendency to blame young people for their
behaviors. We worry about them being victimized, but also worry about them
acting out and committing acts of violence or aggression. David Finkelhor
calls this dual phenomenon juvenoia (2011). As von Weilers article in this
issue suggests, although current social and technological trends have made
taking and sending imagery of oneself more mainstream than ever before,
when teens share sexualized selfies, it becomes an opportunity to tell
young people what not to do, to threaten them with criminal charges, and
to insist that they are masters of their own destiny. Core CSAIO, on the other
hand, deals with situations where a child or young person has been sexually
abused, usually by a trusted adult, and images of the abuse have been
deliberately placed in a nefarious network of other adults who are all too
 Guest Editorial 265

eager to further objectify and consume them; the children in these images
are not masters of their own destiny in any sense. The tendency to want
to focus on sexting highlights the need for legal and clinical scholars and
practitioners to consider differences and similarities between the experiences
of teens and younger children, and the different contexts in which sexual
images are taken and distributed.
Martins article introduces this Special Issue by providing a unique con-
ceptual model of CSAIO that considers the relationship between offline and
online child sexual abuse and illustrates the complexity of possible harms
done to children made the subject of CSAIO. These conceptualizations
challenge existing trauma treatment modalities and call for research to
expand trauma frameworks to move beyond symptom management and
narrow temporal assumptions specifically for CSAIO. In Slanes contribution,
the legal harms recognized as arising from simple possession and viewing
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of sexual images of young people are distinguished from the harms arising
from the creation and distribution of a permanent record of abuse. These
separate conceptualizations are intended to create a space for the possibil-
ity of shared harms that could arise both for victims of core CSAIO (where
the images are records of sexual abuse) and for victims of non-consensual
distribution (where the images were produced in a non-abusive context).
Quayles contribution further highlights the importance of coercion in distin-
guishing between harmful situations where teens self-produce sexual images
and those that may not be harmful. von Weilers contribution reviews studies
she was involved in that examined CSAIO as a multi-faceted phenomenon,
including the recommendation that practitioners need to understand why
young people take risks online in order to provide appropriate support.
This Special Issue broadens our understanding of the complex nature
of child sexual abuse images online, particularly the views expressed to-
wards conceptualizing and understanding the harms done to children made
the subjects of the abuse images. Specifically, this special issue draws atten-
tion to the need to clarify our understanding of the many facets of victims
experiences and the challenges that practitioners and investigators face, as
addressed by Sinclair in her contribution. We need sustained focus on iden-
tifying and addressing the knowledge gaps and barriers to cross-sectoral
responses to CSAIO. While many key stakeholders are working to help chil-
dren and protect them from online sexual abuse and exploitation, the full
potential of their wealth of knowledge and ideas can only be realized if they
are able to share their wisdom, research, experiences, and best practices
together. A specific aim of the symposium, therefore, was to develop part-
nerships for collaborative work and research across sectors regarding best
practices in response to child sexual abuse images online. We are pleased
to have secured further funding from SSHRC to advance those partnerships
and improve upon knowledge exchange between the sectors, to which all of
the contributors to this Special Issue will contribute. Ultimately, our primary
 266 Guest Editorial

goal is to develop capacity among practitioners and investigators so that

they are better informed about the potential effects of CSAIO and to inform
development of assessment and treatment strategies that acknowledge them.

Jennifer Martin and Andrea Slane

Guest Editors

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors thank Linn Clark for excellent editing of this Special Issue.

REFERENCES
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