This piece was published in the 2022 CommonProtect report, a major report reviewing all Commonwealth legal systems and their responses to child sexual abuse and exploitation.
Organised child sexual abuse refers to the sexual abuse of one or more children by multiple adult perpetrators who are acting in concert.[1] Organised abuse is one of the most serious forms of child maltreatment and a common scenario for the production and distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The propensity of child sex offenders to network with one another and conspire in the sexual exploitation of children has been recognised for over forty years.[2] While organised abuse is a serious form of organised crime, state responses to organised abuse have been halting and uncertain. It is sometimes assumed that organised abuse is a particular problem for low and middle income countries however high income countries have struggled to acknowledge and address organised abuse. Organised abuse reveals significant and ongoing failures of child safeguarding and responses to child sexual abuse. While there are persistent obstacles and challenges to developing a comprehensive response to organised abuse, examples of promising practices and constructive policy shifts are also evident.
What is organised abuse?
The term “organised abuse” was coined in the early 1990s to describe complex child protection cases in high-income countries such as England, the United States and Australia, involving multiple children who disclosed sexual abuse by networks of perpetrators.[3] These cases included family-based organised abuse (often orchestrated by one or both parents), organised abuse in institutional settings (such as childcare, churches and schools), and the street-based exploitation of children missing from home or children in out-of-home care.[4] Children in organised abuse cases disclose severe and sadistic forms of maltreatment and presented as highly traumatised. Their presentations were congruent with an adult cohort of mental health patients who describe similar patterns of exploitation in their formative years.[5] This group of victims and survivors typically disclose the production of CSAM as part of their abuse.
When organised abuse cases first emerged in the 1980s, they highlighted the need for increased coordination across all agencies involved in sexual abuse investigations. The disclosures of multiple victims and the involvement of multiple perpetrators introduces significant complexity into organised abuse investigations, requiring careful planning and cooperation between law enforcement and child protection agencies.[6] The divergent prerogatives of child protection and law enforcement agencies undermined investigations in some high-profile cases, while prosecutors sought to develop a strategic approach to the prosecution of multiple perpetrators based on the evidence provided by multiple young and vulnerable witnesses.[7] Investigative missteps and failures to secure prosecutions in some organised abuse cases have been highlighted in sceptical media coverage as evidence that organised abuse allegations are baseless and the product of “moral panic” and “false memories”.[8] The consequent media backlash complicated the efforts of child protection and mental health practitioners to develop a specific response to the problem of organised abuse. By the late 1990s, the proposition that child sex offenders might collude in the abuse of children was widely rejected in media and scholarly literature.[9]
Paradoxically, this sceptical position was firming up at the same time that the popularisation of the internet was providing undeniable evidence of the scale of organised abuse. Child sexual abusers have proven to be highly sensitised to the opportunities offered by new technologies to contact each other and facilitate the abuse of children. Organised abuse networks have formed online while face-to-face networks make extensive use of online technologies to groom and surveil victims and distribute CSAM.[10] Reports of CSAM have increased exponentially over the last twenty five years to a point of unprecedented availability, with a distinct trend towards the more serious abuse of younger children.[11] The so-called dark web has enabled the development of communities of child sexual abusers numbering in their millions.[12]
The accumulation of digital evidence has disrupted although not entirely displaced scepticism over organised abuse. Other developments including recurrent scandals over clergy and institutional abuse and revelations of sexual violence by high-profile individuals, have underscored a collective propensity towards passivity, denial and complicity in the face of the mass abuse of children. There has been a paradigm shift in public and state willingness to acknowledge and address organised abuse although current responses are uneven and shifting. However many challenges remain.
Contemporary responses to organised abuse
Responses to organised abuse and conceptualisations of it are driven by terminological and legislative distinctions that are somewhat arbitrary when applied to complex fact scenarios involving multiple perpetrators and victims of abuse. Over the last two decades, the vocabulary of “trafficking” and “sexual exploitation” have become prominent in legal and policy frameworks that address multi-perpetrator, multi-victim cases of sexual abuse. However, definitions of these terms vary considerably between jurisdictions with significant impacts on policy and practice.[13]
The policy language of “sexual exploitation” originally targeted commercial (that is, profit-driven) abuse of children, however, most organised abuse is not motivated by financial gain, and hence this language excluded the majority of relevant cases.[14] Contemporary definitions of sexual exploitation recognises abuse that includes any inducement or benefit to victim or perpetrator, however this definition is so broad that it arguably includes most cases of child sexual abuse, which typically includes such elements. Jurisdictions often focus on particular scenarios of sexual exploitation linked to media scandal or policing priorities. For example, in the United Kingdom, media exposure of groups of men targeting girls in out-of-home-care led to a policy response to child sexual abuse that targets street-based “grooming”.[15] In contrast, in Australia, child sexual exploitation is generally framed as an online offence, since Commonwealth legislation on child exploitation focuses specifically on telecommunications services.
In the United States, “trafficking” has become a frequent nomenclature when referring to the organised sexual abuse of children, although the relevance of this term varies in other countries due to legislative differences. The terminology of trafficking is politically fraught since it can conflate child sexual exploitation with the sexual exploitation of adults and voluntary sex work, and is linked to other policy issues including illegal migration and border security concerns. Responses to trafficking are frequently led by law enforcement with a focus on victim remedies that facilitate their cooperation with police investigation, rather than on underlying victim-perpetrator dynamics and impacts.[16]
While the terminology of “trafficking” and “exploitation” address common elements of organised abuse, they do not specifically recognise the presence of multiple perpetrators which constitutes organised abuse as a form of organised crime. Victims of organised abuse report being terrorised into silence and compliance, developing traumatic and dissociative conditions that inhibit their ability to disclose or provide testimony, and being stalked and threatened by networks of offenders.[17] State agencies and police units who target organised crime have often failed to address the extent of organised abuse and the threat that it poses to victimised children and adult survivors.[18]
Key scenarios of organised abuse are routinely overlooked by state authorities. A major block to a more fulsome understanding of organised abuse appears to be the prevalence of parental perpetration. Research based on victim report and criminal prosecution consistently finds that parents are the largest and most serious category of perpetrators of organised abuse.[19] A recent study of the most highly traded CSAM series found that the most popular images were made by fathers abusing their prepubescent daughters.[20] However governments and state authorities in high income countries have proven to be reluctant to recognise and address familial sexual abuse as a specific policy priority, preferring instead to target extra-familial abuse and online abuse.[21] Children subject to familial organised abuse are likely to grow to adulthood in the absence of a protective intervention, accruing chronic and acute psychological and psychosocial disability.
Promising practices
Responding to organised abuse requires acknowledgement of the problem, which can be challenging for government and state authorities. The persistence of networks of sexual abusers is evidence of both political and policy failure, in that child safeguarding mechanisms and systems are clearly failing to detect, intervene in and prevent the egregious exploitation of children. There is therefore a political disincentive to acknowledge this problem. The prevalence of family-based organised sexual abuse suggests that, at the very least, some child sex offenders are siring children with the intention of abusing them, which raises questions about familial privacy and parental control over children that are without simple resolution.[22] While many jurisdictions have responded to the challenges of complex child protection cases with the development of interagency protocols and joint investigative teams, investigation and prosecution of organised abuse remains infrequent and fraught.
An effective response to organised abuse should be driven by evidence rather than service prerogatives or legislative distinctions. Such a response would take into account victim report studies which include the “dark figure” of unreported or unknown incidents as well as evidence gleaned from police investigation and prosecution. It is common for child and adult victims reporting multi-perpetrator abuse to encounter significant disbelief from frontline professionals.[23] Therefore, there is a need for professional training in organised abuse, as well as interdisciplinary collaboration and information sharing between law enforcement, mental health professional and social workers. Organised abuse requires intelligence-driven policing that includes data-matching between victim reports, such that one or more perpetrators named by different victims can be flagged, as well as other innovative examples of policing practices. For example, police may engage in the active disruption of known networks of child abusers through strategic policing interventions even in the absence of criminal charges.
Child victims and adult survivors of organised abuse are vulnerable and easily intimidated witnesses who find the investigation and prosecution process very destabilising. Investigation and prosecution strategies need to be trauma-informed to facilitate victim cooperation and the provision of high-quality witness evidence. Victims and survivors require specialist, effective and affordable mental health care as well as measures to address other common psychosocial needs amongst this population, including housing.
Child victims and adult survivors of organised abuse often have safety concerns linked to the online circulation of CSAM of their abuse. At present, it is very difficult for survivors to find information about the extent of the online circulation of their CSAM or to find support to have this content detected and removed. The ongoing circulation of this content directly undermines their safety. A significant proportion of CSAM survivors report ongoing threats and harassment from CSAM consumers.[24] Organised abuse survivors require support from online safety agencies who can proactively monitor and seek the removal of their CSAM where it has been detected. More broadly, it is clear that effective internet regulation is a crucial tool in addressing the harms of organised abuse, not only to reduce and remove CSAM but to inhibit the formation of online networks of offenders.[25]
Footnotes
[1] M. Salter, Organised Sexual Abuse (London: Glasshouse/Routledge, 2013).
[2] Tina M. Berenbaum et al., "Child Pornography in the 1970s," in Child Pornography and Sex Rings, ed. Ann Wolbert Burgess and Marieanne Lindeqvist Clark (Lexington MA; Toronto: Lexington Books, 1984).
[3] Peter Bibby, ed. Organised Abuse: The Current Debate (London: Arena, 1996).
[4] B. Gallagher, B. Hughes, and H. Parker, "The Nature and Extent of Known Cases of Organised Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales," in Organised Abuse: The Current Debate, ed. P. Bibby (London: Arena, 1996).
[5] Michael Salter and Juliet Richters, "Organised Abuse: A Neglected Category of Sexual Abuse with Significant Lifetime Mental Healthcare Sequelae," Journal of Mental Health 21, no. 5 (2012).
[6] Bernard Gallagher, "Grappling with Smoke: Investigating and Managing Organised Child Sexual Abuse - a Good Practice Guide," in Policy, Practice, Research (London: National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 1998).
[7] R. Cheit, The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology and the Sexual Abuse of Children (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).
[8] Michael Salter, "Organized Child Sexual Abuse in the Media," in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Crime, Media and Popular Culture, ed. N. Rafter and M. Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
[9] Cheit, The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology and the Sexual Abuse of Children.
[10] Janis Wolak, "Technology-Facilitated Organized Abuse: An Examination of Law Enforcement Arrest Cases," International Journal for Crime, Justice & Social Democracy 4, no. 2 (2015).
[11] Michael Salter and Tyson Whitten, "A Comparative Content Analysis of Pre-Internet and Contemporary Child Sexual Abuse Material," Deviant Behavior (2021).
[12] WeProtect, "Global Threat Assessment," (WeProtect Global Alliance, 2021).
[13] WeProtect Global Alliance, "Framing Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Online as a Form of Human Trafficking: Opportunities, Challenges and Implications," (2021).
[14] L. Kelly and L. Regan, "Sexual Exploitation of Children in Europe: Child Pornography," The Journal of Sexual Aggression 6, no. 1/2 (2000).
[15] M. Salter and S. Dagistanli, "Cultures of Abuse: ‘Sex Grooming’, Organised Abuse and Race in Rochdale, Uk," International Journal of Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 4, no. 2 (2015).
[16] Keren David and Michael Salter, "‘They Are Here without Chains, but with Invisible Chains’: Understandings of Modern Slavery within the New South Wales Settlement Sector," Social & Legal Studies 31, no. 1 (2022).
[17] Salter, Organised Sexual Abuse; M. Salter, "Organized Abuse in Adulthood: Survivor and Professional Perspectives," Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 18, no. 3 (2017).
[18] Leslie Cooper, Julie Anaf, and Margaret Bowden, "Contested Concepts in Violence against Women: 'Intimate', 'Domestic' or 'Torture'," Australian Social Work 59, no. 3 (2006).
[19] C3P, "Survivor's Survey Preliminary Report," (Winnipeg: Canadan Centre for Child Protection, 2017); Salter, Organised Sexual Abuse; Michael Salter et al., "Production and Distribution of Child Sexual Abuse Material by Parental Figures," (2021).
[20] MC Seto et al., "Production and Active Trading of Child Sexual Exploitation Images Depicting Identified Victims: Ncmec/Thorn Research Report," (Alexandria, VA: National Center for Missing & Exploited Children & Thorn, 2018).
[21] M. Salter, "The Privatisation of Incest: The Neglect of Familial Sexual Abuse in Australian Public Inquiries," in The Sexual Abuse of Children: Recognition and Redress, ed. Yorick Smaal, Andy Kaladeflos, and Mark Finnane (Melbourne: Monash University Press, 2016).
[22] Salter et al., "Production and Distribution of Child Sexual Abuse Material by Parental Figures."
[23] M. Salter, "Multi-Perpetrator Domestic Violence," Trauma, Violence, & Abuse 15, no. 2 (2014).
[24] C3P, "Survivor's Survey Preliminary Report."
[25] Michael Salter and Lloyd Richardson, "The Trichan Takedown: Lessons in the Governance and Regulation of Child Sexual Abuse Material," Policy & Internet 13, no. 3 (2021).