Hotline.ie, the Irish national centre established to combat online child sexual abuse material (CSAM) has published its annual report for 2020.
The report concludes that there has been a 142% increase in child sexual abuse material which appeared to be “self-generated imagery or videos.”
Hotline say that this material predominately featured girls under the age of 15 engaging in explicit sexual activity on webcams while Hotline.ie analysts also noted that signs of coercion or grooming were often present in such scenarios.
The report also notes that 42% of commercial child sexual abuse refers to material which in Hotline.ie ‘professional opinion appears to have been produced or is being used for the purpose of financial gain by the distributor.
According to Hotline.ie, 2020 is the third consecutive year, since the inception of its service two decades ago, when it has received over 10,000 public reports, 10,583.
This figure is comparable to the 2019 reporting level of 10,773.
Hotline.ie note however that one report refers to a “single” publicly-sourced reference of suspected illegal online content (i.e. a website).
In most cases the “single” reference contains, displays or leads to hundreds of items (i.e. images, videos, list of hyperlinks to other webpages, etc).
The findings have led Minister of State with special responsibility for Civil and Criminal Justice, Hildegarde Naughton, to criticise what she describes as the “relatively low level of uptake” from large online platforms situated in Ireland who have not yet signed up to the states national reporting service.
The Minister said the lack of engagement by these companies was “disappointing.”
The annual Report also comes as the online company, OnlyFans, which facilitates user-generated pornographic content, confirmed that it is reversing its plans to prohibit “sexually explicit” content on its platform after it secured agreement with its payment processors.