RESEARCH ARTICLE
A new peer-reviewed research article, produced as part of the EU-funded Project 2KNOW by an international multidisciplinary research team, was published in the respected journal Child Abuse & Neglect. The study investigates the differences between CSAM offenders who self-report having been charged for sexual offenses against a child or an adult and those who self-report not having been charged of such offenses.
Hanna-Mari Lahtinen, Kirsi Honkalampi, Tegan Insoll, Juha Nurmi, Ethel Quayle, Anna Katariina Ovaska, Nina Vaaranen-Valkonen. "Investigating the disparities among child sexual abuse material users: Anonymous self-reports from both charged and uncharged individuals". Child abuse & neglect, 2025.
The study analyses anonymous survey data from 2384 respondents who sought CSAM on the dark web. The sample was divided into three groups: those who admitted to having been charged for sexual offenses against children (CS offenders), those who admitted to having been charged for sexual offenses against adults (AS offenders), and those who admitted to no charges (NC group). We used multinomial logistic regression analysis to analyze differences in self-reported behavior and motivation to access CSAM between the three groups.
The research found that having charges for a violent offense against a child or an adult, searching for material depicting the sexual abuse of infants and toddlers, grooming children, and having physical contact with children significantly increased the risk of belonging to the AS or CS group compared to the group that reported no charges.
About the 2KNOW project
The study, which is conducted as a part of the project Knowledge to Prevent (2KNOW) has been produced with the financial support of the European Commission’s Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV) Programme (2022). The project is led by Protect Children, with the Council of the Baltic Sea States and the University of Eastern Finland as partners. Project 2KNOW aims to support and improve national and international data collection on violence against children by developing a sustainable and replicable data collection model that is suited to gathering information about online violence against children.
The 2KNOW project has been produced with the financial support of the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values Programme (CERV) Programme (2022) of the European Union. The contents herein are the sole responsibility of project partnership and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Commission.
