Supplementary written evidence submitted by The Lucy Faithfull Foundation (PFF0009)

Introduction

The Lucy Faithfull Foundation is a child protection charity with a 25-year track record of working to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse. 

Thank you for inviting the Foundation to give oral evidence to the Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday 13th March 2018.  We were invited to follow-up in writing to share any further comments we might have about any of the subjects raised. We are grateful for the opportunity to submit the following as evidence, which focuses specifically on questions raised in the session.

The impact of the internet on the nature of child sexual abuse over the last decade

This falls into three distinct realms.

One is that the internet provides a grooming environment for sexual offenders who can target children across a range of platforms, be they social networks, by text message or communication tools such as SKYPE. Children tend to be ‘unaccompanied’ online in a way they are never unaccompanied in the offline world, and offenders are able to engage with them in their homes and bedrooms by way of their computer or smart phone, without hindrance.  This activity results in the production of self-taken (but often coerced) imagery; extortion; and face-to-face meetings for the purpose of sexual engagement. Vigilante action in this regard is an unfortunate consequence of limited police resources.

The second feature is that offenders are able to engage with each other in a way that was not previously available. In the pre internet world the most common way that men with a sexual interest in children could engage with each other was, ironically, if they were incarcerated. In the post internet world it is possible for these individuals to meet and converse, albeit virtually, via online networks, message boards, Peer to Peer networks, Internet Relay Chat, and so forth. These communities and conspiracies promote a deviant ideology and enable offenders to share abusive imagery and abusive norms without too much oversight.  On occasions these networks will also be involved in the ‘real time’ abuse of children, via online ‘live streaming’ technology.

The third feature relates to the production and dissemination of abusive imagery. Prior to the development of the internet abusive imagery was available, but it was extraordinarily difficult to source, expensive, and limited in scope. In 1990 Police forces estimated there were around 7000 indecent images in circulation, all ‘hard copy’, or printed. Towards the end of 2016, it was estimated that between fifty and one hundred thousand individuals in the UK alone were accessing indecent imagery, with the number of indecent images running into the millions. The psychological drives that affect viewers of such material (outside the scope of this briefing) suggest that novelty, disinhibition, and the suspension of empathy are significant influences on viewers of such material, and that consequently there will never be enough material to satisfy demand, hence ‘live streaming’ and abuse on demand emerging as trends. Once Virtual Reality technologies are perfected, it is likely these too will be harnessed by producers and viewers.

Finally, a separate but related consideration concerns the use of digital technology and media in the sexual abuse of children offline.  Often referred to as ‘technology-assisted harmful sexual behaviour’, examples include the grooming of vulnerable young people within the context of child sexual exploitation or the sexual abuse of young people within gang-contexts i.e. the filming of abusive sex acts on mobile phone cameras.

Fifty per cent of offenders who view illegal images online will then go on to commit contact offenders

The Foundation is not aware of any research that supports the foregoing assertion. In considering what is generally termed ‘crossover’, two issues can be considered. One is what can be discovered about the criminal histories of men who are arrested for possession of IIOC. The other is what can be discovered about the recidivism of men who have been convicted of possession of IIOC: are they reconvicted for further offences of possession, or are they reconvicted of contact offences?

In relation to the former point, the consensus appears to suggest that most men who are newly discovered as IIOC viewers have no criminal history at all. Seto’s (2011)[1] consideration of a wide range of studies revealed that around 12% of men who were convicted of viewing IIOC had prior convictions for contact offending; 88% did not. The most recent study of the same matter, by Krone (2017)[2], suggests that 86% of a cohort of Australian men had no prior convictions at the time of their arrest for IIOC possession.

Significantly higher rates of previous sexual misconduct have been discovered in studies using self-report data – most significantly in Burke and Hernandez (2009)[3], which ultimately suggested that 84% of their sample of 155 men incarcerated in a Federal prison admitted to molesting what were very large numbers of children, although only 13% of them had generated prior convictions. However, the Butner study has been widely criticised for its methodology, and is seen as a ‘statistical outlier’ which cannot be relied upon.  It has also been used, erroneously, to predict the future conduct of all viewers of IIOC, as opposed to the self-reported prior conduct of a small and atypical number of IIOC consumers.  Further, an increased level of admission of prior sexual misconduct has also been revealed in other studies, by the use of a polygraph examination, although in the most cited study the admissions largely related to other internet based offending rather than offences connected to direct molestation.

The obvious difficulty in all retrospective studies is that the same methodologies applied to men with no convictions at all, may reveal a level of previous sexual misconduct that would surprise the uninitiated. The simple fact that around 80% of all child molestation goes unreported suggests a significant number of undiscovered child molesters must be present in our society. It may, of course, be the case that a sample of men convicted of possessing IIOC would contain a higher than average proportion of unrevealed child molesters: as a matter of social policy, viewers of IIOC should be assessed with some rigour.

The second matter in terms of direction of travel relates to recidivism. Recidivism is not, of course, a measure of the totality of reoffending, and one needs to take heed of the caveat that most child molestation is never reported, let alone results in a conviction. Taking that into account, the revealed rate of recidivism of IIOC viewers seems low, with Seto (2015) indicating a recidivism rate of just 3% for contact offences and 7% for further IIOC offences, over an average follow up period of eight years. Krone’s (2017) very recent study of Australian men suggests 93.4% of a cohort of 152 men did not generate a new conviction for a sexual offence after a four year follow up.

Compared to ‘contact’ offenders, who average a recidivism rate of 12% to 13%, ‘viewers’ appear to desist at a substantially greater rate.  

Therefore, the most likely trajectory of IIOC viewers appears to be from a position where they have not, in the main, molested children to one where they do not, in the main, go on to molest children. The substantial difficulty for police forces and safeguarding authorities remains how to differentiate between those men who pose a direct risk of contact offending to children and those who, however much they are connected to the sexual exploitation of children, do not.

Contact offenders are more likely to have experienced childhood difficulties, did those who go on to commit abuse get enough support at the time, or indeed didn’t even come forward

Preventing child sexual abuse involves a wide range of activities, including direct work with identified offenders and victims or survivors, as well as an engagement ‘upstream’ which targets the origins of vulnerabilities. Specific engagement with children demonstrating inappropriate or troubling sexual behaviours is necessary, but prevention efforts also need to be universal, and attached to the whole of society. The notion of ‘trauma informed’ practice  focuses on the historic experiences of both perpetrators and victims, and the ways in which therapeutic interventions can be used as a prophylactic against either repeat victimisation or serial offending.

In considering the histories of identified contact offenders, one is drawn to a conclusion that, for the most part, their childhoods are indeed characterised by adversity. However, this alone cannot explain the behaviour of identified perpetrators, since many individuals with troubled or abusive histories do not become abusive in their own right. One of the key differences between those victims/survivors who go on to abuse others and those who do not, is thought to be the response they receive at the time of their abuse. The best outcomes for victims/survivors are associated with those children who disclose their abuse to a trusted adult at the time and receive a caring and protective response. Our clinical experience at the Foundation is that this is also true of many abusers i.e. they felt unable to disclose their abuse at the time and/or received an inadequate response.

Gender is barely discussed in terms of understanding the characteristics of perpetrators, but it is the case that the vast majority of identified contact offenders, and a near unanimity of IIOC consumers, are male.  It seems evident then that female victims/survivors are less likely to go on to abuse others than male victims/survivors.

Significant care needs to be taken that a victim blaming philosophy does not take root: if boys who are sexually abused realise that they may be viewed as potential future perpetrators it may inhibit their willingness to disclose their own abuse and seek help and restitution, even further.

Characteristics of the perpetrators of CSE/A and the difference between those who operate alone as opposed to those whose who form part of an organised group

Over thirty years we have developed a good understanding of the traits of contact offenders, whether they operate singly or in groups and gangs. Known as ‘the big four’, these traits or tendencies include: ‘Emotional dysregulation’ – involving problems identifying and controlling emotional states; ‘interpersonal, intimacy, and social skills deficits’ – characterised by social isolation, loneliness and dissatisfaction; ‘distorted sexual scripts’ – including deviant sexual fantasies and arousal; and ‘offence-supportive cognitions’ – also known as cognitive distortions. The only likely difference between lone offenders and group offenders is that the former are less likely to be affected or influenced by the reinforcing culture of the group and the facilitation of offending that collectives provide: although in recent times lone offenders may also find justification for their conduct and validation for their sexuality in the online world.

In a similar vein, just as lone offenders’ primary motivations will vary, so this is true of abuser groups.  For example, some groups’ origins may lie in a shared sexual deviancy while other groups may be characterised by involvement in wider criminal activity, of which the sexual exploitation of young people plays one part.

The growth of online indecent images and who is accessing them

Prior to the growth of the internet, acquiring indecent images required a substantial effort, substantial funds, and trusted connections with other offenders – all of which inhibited the purchase, dissemination and sharing of that material. Individuals who acquired or produced such material were likely to self-identify as paedophiles, a label they might not find stigmatising or problematic. The internet has offered considerable opportunities for those same individuals, since Indecent Imagery is simply a form of pornography for paedophiles. However, there are substantial numbers of persons, quite probably the majority, whose viewing habits in terms of pornography are far less discriminating, and omnivorous, and for whom IIOC is simply one aspect of a galaxy of other viewing habits.  Many of those individuals would not regard themselves as paedophiles at all, and more as problematic pornography consumers, albeit this realisation may only dawn upon them after arrest. This perspective offers little comfort, since the demand for new and novel images and experiences continues to drive the sexual exploitation of real children. Reducing the consumption, and therefore the production, of IIOC is one of the greatest challenges for safeguarding agencies, and ought to be regarded as a strategic goal for law enforcement and organisations concerned with the well-being of children.

The reason as to why some people’s use of pornography is less discriminating than others are complex.  In part it relates to the psychological make-up of those individuals, for example, in terms of their levels of impulsivity or sexual preoccupation.  However, arguments have also been put forward that the medium of the internet itself promotes irresponsible decision-making, not least because of the perception of anonymity and invisibility associated with internet-use.

Outcomes for people when they do come forward

The vast majority of viewers of IIOC only seek treatment or are provided with it after they are identified by law enforcement. Opportunities for individuals to seek anonymous help prior to their being identified are limited, although many individuals who call the Stop it Now! Helpline after arrest attest that they would have sought help online if they could have found it. The Stop it Now! Deterrence Project (https://www.stopitnow.org.uk/deterrence-campaign.htm) has demonstrated that offering IIOC viewers an alternative to continuing with viewing indecent, abusive and exploitative imagery does result in their seeking help.

Alternatives to conviction for people viewing IIOC

Substantial efforts ought to be made to engage, and thereby divert and deter, the large numbers of individuals whose viewing of IIOC is part of a wider pattern of pornography viewing online. These individuals need to feel that their anonymity online is mythical rather than real, and that the normal rules of society exist as much online as they do in the offline world. Challenging offenders in the environment where they operate is necessary, and the sense that the internet is an anarchic and nihilistic playground needs to be undermined. Diverting and deterring those who can be diverted and deterred reduces the burdens on law enforcement, since those individuals with a substantial sexual interest in children, those producing IIOC, and those making financial gain from it will be more visible. The position at the moment, in our view, is that the numbers of viewers is so high that many of them are acting as a form of chaff, that diverts resources away from producers, online groomers, and the hard core paedophiles.  This argument is strengthened by the lower rates of re-conviction, as referred to above, for IIOC-only offenders, which suggests that many of them do not require intensive treatment and risk management in order to rebuild their lives on a more responsible footing. 

The dark web

Offenders inhabit the dark web as they are attracted by its lack of governance, its anonymity, and the opportunities it provides for illegal activity. Efforts ought to be made to persuade providers of search engines to limit the mechanisms and sign posts by which the casual internet user can access tools, including TOR, that enable access to dark web sites offering IIOC. A ‘Google’ search using the terms ‘access dark web’ on 22nd March 2018 provided 3 million articles on how to do so.

Taking prevention forward

Meaningful prevention strategies dealing with sexual abuse both online and offline need to operate at a number of levels, and with a number of target groups. The Prevention Framework (Smallbone, Marshall & Wortley, 2008)[4] offers a means of making prevention meaningful (please see below, Appendix 1).

Dealing only with the risks posed online, parents need to be aware, and most are not, of the risks posed to their children in social networks, and by easily accessed pornographic imagery. Viewing pornography prematurely makes children vulnerable to misogynistic and exploitative ideologies, disinhibits them, and makes them vulnerable to exploitation. Children and young people need to be empowered to resist the very powerful messages they receive, sometimes from the media and sometimes from online groomers, about self-image, self-esteem, and desirability, and educational messages need to be shaped by research into their effectiveness and utility rather than by myth. As an example, one persistently unhelpful trope is that online groomers usually operate by presenting themselves to young people as young people, and they are deceptive about their intentions: they do not, they engage and seduce vulnerable young people directly, and prevention messages need to incorporate that reality, just as our thinking about offline offenders needs to move away from the unhelpful focus on ‘stranger danger.’

In terms of our engagement with online offenders who consume and thereby encourage the production of IIOC and the sexual abuse of unknown children, we need to learn from the accounts of men who have been identified as IIOC offenders, and understand the routes through which they came to offend. This would involve prevention messages being delivered in the environments inhabited by these individuals, both on the dark web and the open web. The anonymity and comfort of online offenders needs to be challenged and disrupted, and diversion and deterrence strategies, which LFF and Stop it Now! can demonstrate have been effective in persuading some offenders to seek help, need to be enacted on a wider basis.

We would welcome a cross-government strategy which takes a comprehensive approach to prevention and involves all government departments. The responsibility for preventing child sexual abuse, and driving forward interventions and activities to that endeavour, lies not with one government department. The Home Office, Ministry of Justice, Department of Health, Department for Education – and others – all have a role to play.

Research into perpetrators 

There has been substantial and well-constructed research into the psychological drives, demographic features, personal histories and behaviours of identified perpetrators of child sexual abuse for over thirty years, and a voluminous body of literature already exists regarding causation, behaviour, and treatment. The biggest challenge, from this point, is to move ‘upstream’, and attempt to engage with prospective perpetrators before – rather than after – they offend. This relates, of course, to the development of a comprehensive model of prevention, based upon long established ‘public health’ principles. The work of Smallbone and Wortley in respect to this matter has much to commend it.

Appendix 1

Child abuse prevention strategies in the online environment

The wisdom and necessity of adopting a comprehensive prevention strategy in relation to online sexual abuse becomes more starkly apparent when the alternative, what might be termed a ‘reactive’ strategy, is considered.

In cases where contact sexual abuse has occurred, whether within a family or outside it, the ‘reactive’ response rests upon the ability and capacity of children who have been sexually abused to make a complaint to someone who will both believe and act upon that disclosure, for that person to make contact with the authorities, and for the authorities to be successful in identifying and prosecuting the perpetrator, as well as providing restitution to the victim. This is not a scenario that tends to exist in reality, since the majority of sexual abuse experienced by children is not reported to the authorities, and the majority of abuse reported to the authorities does not result in prosecution or restitution.

In contemplating sexual offending against children which takes place in the environment of the internet, since it is appropriate to consider the internet is an environment in the same way as a town, city, or household is an environment, one is drawn to similar conclusions. Whether considering the viewing of Child Sexual Abuse Material, or the online grooming of children, for whatever purpose, it remains the case that the majority of perpetrators will neither be identified nor punished.

In terms of our current engagement with online sexual abuse, the bulk of our policing and therapeutic activities are essentially reactive. Indecent images of children (IIOC) appear online and we might act to remove them, but not before it has been produced and seen and a child has already been subjected to harm, and those who view it have begun to experience deviant arousal or been exposed to a deviant ideology. An online groomer may be identified, but often only after a child has provided him with self-taken imagery and been traumatised by the experience. We might disrupt or even dismantle a network, but only after months of activity, with mass dissemination of abusive imagery or the creation of a deviant and conspiratorial sub culture.

A truly ‘preventive’ strategy seeks to reduce the prospects of sexual abuse maintaining a hold in a society by making the environment hostile to the development of abusive norms, educating the society about the facts and realities of sexual abuse, and providing opportunities for early and effective intervention. In this sense, if we adopt the view, as we ought to, that the internet is an environment in the same way as a town, village, or household is an environment, then the opportunity to engage with the potential community of prospective and actual victims, prospective and actual perpetrators, and prospective and actual interveners and protectors becomes more likely, and more meaningful.

Most societies lend themselves to the adoption of a comprehensive ‘public health’ initiative in respect to the problem of child sexual abuse. A public health response (See Smallbone and Wortley, and others) seeks to reduce the incidence of a disease or condition by removing or ameliorating the conditions in which the disease arises. Thus, rather than treating patients for malaria or diabetes, a public health initiative would drain the malarial swamp, or it would reduce the consumption of sugar. Persons at high risk would need to be directly engaged in order that their conduct did not lead to their receiving harm, and persons who actually develop the disease need to be treated in order that their condition does not become worse.

A public health initiative in terms of child sexual abuse, be that online or offline, would seek to reduce or challenge those features in a society which are generating the abuse, in addition to dealing with abuse once it has occurred and been reported or detected. Clearly, a strategy which prevents abuse rather than detects abuse is preferable from a child’s point of view, since the trauma contingent upon the experience of molestation will not have been experienced at all.

There are four elements to a public health prevention strategy, and thereby a child sexual abuse prevention strategy.

Primary Prevention deals with the whole society, and an effective primary prevention campaign should result in a widespread understanding of the nature of the problem and, over time, the wholesale reduction of the incidence of sexual abuse online, be that grooming or the dissemination of IIOC. Public information campaigns targeting anyone who engages with the online environment, and raising the profile of abuse as a problem need to be undertaken. These might highlight specific issues, such as grooming, the realities of IIOC and the need to speak out about known abuses, or how to resist peer pressure. They might also highlight the existence of helping agencies, be they in the voluntary or statutory sectors. Any campaign dealing with issues which affect the online world needs to be presented in the online world, including on the dark web. In particular, perpetrators of abuses such as online groomers, IIOC viewers and prospective IIOC viewers need to feel the online world is no more anarchic and nihilistic than the offline world, and that they will be held to account in that world as they might be held to account in others.

Secondary Prevention targets groups or individuals who are specifically at risk, and who may already have come to the attention of the authorities, or caused anxiety in their own families and schools. A secondary prevention strategy would rely upon the capacity of agencies, such as schools, social and medical services, online moderators, and parents and community members to identify individuals who were felt to be at risk of their behaviour escalating, and to assign them to existing or newly designed and developed services. Self-awareness may also drive some individuals to seek help, hence the importance of online and offline services, be they helplines, confidential counselling services, moderated forums or educational self-help websites for persons on the cusp of viewing IIOC. By the same token, anxieties around children’s use of the internet and mobile telephones, and the vulnerability of those children to sexual exploitation might best be addressed through simple online public education initiatives targeting specific groups. This could return control of those matters to parents through their developing a greater awareness of the issues at hand. We know, from research, that many parents are woefully ignorant of many aspects of their children’s engagement online, and it must be desirable to change that. Parents need to be targeted by prevention messages in the same way, and in the same environment, through which perpetrators target their children.

Secondary Prevention initiatives need to be shaped by research as to the effectiveness of the messages they convey, in order to avoid victim blaming at one level (some initiatives have been cited as causing trauma in the target audience, or containing implicit criticism of victims) and in order to take account of the realities of risk and how it might be reduced. For example, historic campaigns about ‘stranger danger’ were of limited utility, given the rarity of sexual abuse by strangers. By the same token, assuming that children are targeted online by individuals pretending to be children will result in a campaign that targets a rarer event than designing a campaign that highlights how seductive, direct and sometimes indiscriminate online groomers can be.

Tertiary Prevention responds to identified abuses and abusers, although the main goal is harm reduction and the prevention of reoccurrence rather than ‘simple’ identification and punishment. This is not to say, at all, that there is no role for prison or for explicit restrictions to be placed upon a person’s future conduct, but these facilities need to be used with precision and intelligence. Thus, although a prison sentence may well be necessary and appropriate as a means of registering societal disapproval and removing a dangerous perpetrator from a community, it should also provide a means for intervention and treatment if a perpetrator is to be returned to a community with any confidence. Targeted injunctions, as provided by Sexual Harm Prevention Orders and Sexual Risk Orders, can restrict an identified perpetrator’s access to the internet, social networks, use of anonymising software, VPN, and so on. Activities in this realm also need to offer meaningful and effective treatment to identified victims, be they children identified by Victim ID officers, children who have experienced sexual extortion on line, or children who have been groomed or sexually harmed as a result of their on line engagement.

Quaternary Prevention minimises the effects of revealed abuse. Measures should be in place which minimise the trauma of any disclosures for victims, in terms of arrangements for interview, medical assessments, and so forth. The availability and up to date training of ABE interviewers needs to be given constant thought, and victims should not be treated simply as ‘evidence givers’ in a criminal trial and discarded thereafter. They should have their needs assessed and responded to, regardless of any legal outcome. Family Court cases need to be concluded expeditiously, with the minimum of disruption, in order that children involved in them might be shielded from iatrogenic harm: which is to say that in retrospect we need to encourage a situation where victims and their families conclude that it was better to disclose than to maintain a secret.

A significant additional risk, or consequence, of the necessary response to the viewing of IIOC relates to outcomes for revealed perpetrators. Last year’s NCA report suggested those identified as viewers of IIOC are at substantial risk of suicide, and the consequences of that for their own families and arresting officers were substantial. Without wishing to shift the focus of concern, it hardly assists children abused through IIOC if the children of men identified as viewing that material lose a parent to suicide.

Accordingly, it may assist the contemplation of prevention initiatives if each prospective project were filtered through a ‘public health’ perspective. Thus, any initiative would have to be thought of as offering either ‘universal’, ‘targeted’, ‘post offence’, or ‘ameliorating’ goals, and also be thought of in terms of addressing perpetrator need, victim need, or a wider community need.

The tendency of all safeguarding agencies and governments is to concentrate upon tertiary activities, which is to say that the agencies tend to respond when abuse is revealed or reported. As mentioned previously, such responses are invariably too late for the specific victim concerned in them, however adequately the authorities respond, and however efficient the procedures which follow. In essence, efforts need to shift ‘upstream’, taking a secondary and primary focus wherever possible.  In societies where resources and expertise are limited, prevention strategies have the advantage of offering considerable economic savings, aside from the intangible but morally imperative benefits of reducing suffering.

29 March 2018