OUR MISSION:
The Ending Online Sexual Exploitation and Abuse of Children (OSEAC) Coalition is a U.S. advocacy coalition that aims to improve U.S. government policies and programs to better prevent and address the online sexual exploitation and abuse of children and provide appropriate support to survivors.
OUR MISSION:
The Ending Online Sexual Exploitation and Abuse of Children (OSEAC) Coalition is a U.S. advocacy coalition that aims to improve U.S. government policies and programs to better prevent and address the online sexual exploitation and abuse of children and provide appropriate support to survivors.
What is OSEAC?
Online sexual exploitation and abuse of children (OSEAC) are “all acts of a sexually exploitative or abusive nature carried out against a child that have, at some stage, a connection to the online environment.” This can include the production and distribution of child sexual abuse materials, grooming, sextortion and live-streaming of abusive acts.
Key Statistics:
- Increases in Prosecutions: The US Sentencing Commission’s October 2021 report, which studied child sexual abuse image producers, found that the number of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) producers sentenced between 2005 and 2019 increased by 422%.
- Transformations in Education: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, children spent more time online in 2022 – both unsupervised and during traditional school hours. As a result, children have become more vulnerable to exploitative and potentially violent interactions with cybercriminals.
- Online Predation: Researchers have observed a “three-fold” increase in self-generated imagery depicting 7 to 10-year-olds, as they were increasingly targeted and groomed by internet predators on an industrial scale.
- Cyber Exploitation: In 2021, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received more than 29.3 million CyberTipline reports containing over 84.9 million images, videos, and other content related to suspected child sexual exploitation.
- Reduced Perceptions of Child Safety: Some 80% of children in 25 countries report feeling in danger of sexual abuse or exploitation online. For a child victim, this may result in social isolation, mental health issues, substance abuse, self-harm or suicide, as well as an increased likelihood of exhibiting abusive behaviors themselves in adulthood.
- Abuse of Digital Technologies: As faster broadband connections, mobile devices, and social media platforms have become more widely accessible, the production and dissemination of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) has increased in volume, providing offenders with additional technical possibilities to produce and share CSAM content.
- Rapid Increase in Online Abuse: There has been a 600% increase globally in the number of human trafficking victims whose cases were perpetrated through the use of the internet from 2007 to 2018.