April 2025 / Reading Time: 2 minutes
Searchlight 2025 Overview - Paul Stanfield, Childlight CEO
Our latest Searchlight report into the nature of the crisis underscores the need for urgent action, shining a light on the financial networks that fuel child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA). The theme — who benefits? — asks a critical question: who is making money from this vile trade? The answer is as disturbing as it is clear. Organised crime groups profit, of course, but so do mainstream technology companies. Our research shows that advertising revenue increases when platforms attract high volumes of traffic, including traffic generated by offenders engaging in CSEA. The exploitation of children is not just an atrocity — it is an industry, generating billions of dollars in profits.
Other findings are equally sobering. Offenders are evolving, adapting and exploiting gaps in legislation and regulations. They groom single parents via dating apps to access their children. They target displaced children in conflict zones like Ukraine. And they trade images using sophisticated payment methods, including cryptocurrencies, to evade detection. We found that in these criminal enterprises, a child’s worth is sometimes measured in mere pennies — the price of their suffering at the hands of an online predator. This is a market, structured and profitable, designed to generate revenue off the backs of vulnerable children. But markets can be disrupted, and that is where change must begin.
Searchlight, which complements our global index on the scale of CSEA, not only exposes these crimes: it provides solutions. It sets out how law enforcement and financial institutions can use telltale digital breadcrumbs to track and dismantle CSEA networks. Tech companies must be held accountable, pro-actively detect and remove child sexual abuse material (CSAM), and make more effective use of tried and tested tools, like blocklists, to shut down access to CSAM. Policymakers must act decisively, as the UK has begun to do, by criminalising AI-generated CSAM and banning so-called ‘how-to’ manuals for paedophiles. But much more must be done. We cannot afford to be complacent. This is not a problem to react to — it is one to prevent. Governments, businesses and communities must shift to a prevention-focused approach that stops CSEA before it begins, saving children from irreversible harm rather than scrambling to deal with the awful consequences.
Progress is possible. Prevention is possible. The world has eradicated diseases, tackled pandemics, and fought back against organised crime before. We must do the same here. The cost of inaction is the suffering of millions. And children can’t wait.
Paul Stanfield, Childlight CEO