Third of pornographic material reported in Netherlands center made by children

A third of the illegal child sexual abuse materials reported to Offlimits’ child pornography hotline in 2024 were made by children themselves. In almost three-quarters of the cases, the makers were younger than 12 years old, the expertise center reported. Offlimits spoke of a “worrying trend.”

In total, the center received over 127,000 reports of child pornography last year, together accounting for over 600,000 URLs. Of these web addresses, over 230,000 were found to contain child sex abuse, of which more than 74,000 showed material made by children themselves. More than 96 percent of the websites contain images of girls. Three-quarters of the child makers were under the age of 12, and Offlimits reported that there were “alarmingly” many 6 to 9-year-olds among them.

The images made by children consist of photos or videos of their own genitals and breasts or posing in a “sexual pose,” made with a webcam or telephone, which are then shared online with third parties. There are also images where multiple children can be seen at the same time, or where they use household objects or sex toys.

Madeleine van der Bruggen, team leader of the reporting center, called it “very worrying that these young children in particular make these images, because these types of sexual images do not fit in with the normal sexual development of children of this age. The child may have made these images, but they were distributed without permission or secretly recorded. The images may have been made under encouragement, pressure, coercion, blackmail, or threat by an adult. Very little is known about this.”

In 2023, it became clear that many images made by children themselves were in circulation, and that they often involved very young children. But at that time, Offlimits had not collected figures for the entire year. According to Offlimits and the Center for Sexual Violence, the “alarming figures” for 2024 show that multi-year scientific research is necessary.

“We want to gain more insight into the nature, scale, and impact, and get a picture of the children, their parents, and the perpetrators who incite them to make this material. In order to prevent victimization in the future, we need to know more about this,” said Van der Bruggen.