Understanding transnational online child sexual exploitation and abuse by British men against Filipino children

Abstract

Online child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) causes significant harm to victims, with governments and organisations around the world seeking to prevent and tackle it. To support these efforts, the factors that facilitate this crime must be understood. Research shows that online CSEA offending is facilitated by a range of sexual, psychological, and non-sexual factors, but there is no consideration within the existing literature of the factors that facilitate online CSEA that occurs across national borders. This research helps to address this gap. Specifically, this study explores the factors within Britain that facilitate transnational online CSEA of children in the Philippines by British men. Through semi-structured interviews with 30 CSEA professionals based in the Philippines and Britain, this research explores the range of factors that these professionals perceive as facilitating transnational online CSEA. Many of the factors that apply for online CSEA offending in general apply for transnational online CSEA, including sexual motivations, offenders’ desire for power, and permission-giving thoughts that excuse or normalise abuse. This study uniquely surfaces and examines facilitating factors that may be present in transnational online CSEA offending. A key finding discussed throughout this study is the role of racism, with geographical distance and cultural and physical differences between themselves and their victims providing a means for offenders to dehumanise their victims and justify the abuse. This study also finds that the media, pornography, and online communities can play a significant role in shaping social attitudes about race and sex that can act to facilitate or excuse transnational online CSEA. These factors are explored through the Technology Conscious Socio-ecological Model, developed for this research to enable an exploration of the range of factors that exist within an offender’s whole environment, including the role of the internet and technologies in facilitating this abuse. The findings from this research are used to develop a set of recommendations for government, technology companies and for further research. These should be considered and taken forward to support the development of effective evidence-based solutions that will help to prevent transnational online CSEA from occurring in the first place.