title: Sexualized images of children on the Internet.
abstract: Despite an increase in research on child abuse images and sex offender risk, we still lack specific data about the characteristics of the children found within these images. Such data would assist us with understanding the exploitation of children through abusive images and the choice of images by offenders. We accessed sexualized child images submitted to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) in the United Kingdom. In 1998, CEOP developed a database (ChildBase) of child abuse images gathered from police seizures across the United Kingdom. This database is continually updated and is operationally used to identify victims. We randomly selected 10% of the 247,950 images, submitted during 2005-2009, and sorted them into the following categories: gender, age, and ethnic group (White, Asian, Black, and Hispanic/Latino). Codes (n = 24,550) were analyzed using frequencies and cross-tabulations in relation to gender, age, and racial group. The odds of the abuse images being female versus male were about 4 to 1, and the odds of the images being of White children versus non-White children were about 10 to 1 (9.805). There was a significant gender difference in age distribution of all the children within the images. The limitations of this study are also discussed along with possible implications and recommendations for future research.
authors.affiliation: COPINE Research, Clinical & Health Psychology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK. Ethel.Quayle@ed.ac.uk
authors.forename: Ethel
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Quayle
authors.forename: Terry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jones
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001741:Black or African American / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D001213:Asian / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002669:Child Welfare / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003196:Computer Graphics; D004882:Erotica; D005260:Female; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D020407:Internet / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D010781:Photography; D006113:United Kingdom; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D044465:White People / Q000706:statistics & numerical data