Analysis of sexual abuse of children online and CAM investigations in Europe

Abstract

Child sexual abuse or child´s exploitation online as sexual violence including Child Abuse Materials (CAM/CSAM) is a global phenomenon. This case study aims to get information on the current nature of crimes by online published surveys, reports, articles, and documents as an international and cross-border cybercrime in Europe. To get information of children´s own experiences of some European countries, information on how they react to sexual messages or sexual harassment online or how they recognize a threat to be a victim of sexual abuse online are important aspects to understand the phenomenon at all. The sexually motivated offenders and their behavior online conversations are also important to recognize to get more information of this criminal activity at all. If sexual abuse has been done only online, the knowledge of the current events helps law enforcement authorities (LEAs) to understand how they could find reliably the needed digital evidence for pre-trial investigations and judicial processes. The authorities’ workload can be high in CAM/CSAM cases first with handling enormous digital data, but also with nature of cases which has seen widely causing different forms of stress also to professionals. From this point of view, this study also aims to describe how the different forensic tools and technological solutions would help LEAs with their jobs, for example, by classifying different materials into different categories, recognizing better victims and suspects, or winning time to investigate other crimes.