April 2025 / Reading Time: 6 minutes
STUDY C: Following the money: Examining online financial behaviour to detect child sexual exploitation
Introduction
This is the first study to explore how online financial behaviour may indicate involvement with child sexual exploitation and abuse. A survey of almost 5,000 men in Australia, the United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK) found specific spending patterns among men who had sexual feelings towards children and those who had committed offences against children. Their online shopping, use of cryptocurrency, and other financial behaviour can help inform the efforts to detect child sex offenders. These findings are part of a larger context. According to The 2024 Crypto Crime Report by Chainalysis, child sexual abuse material (CSAM) “is an understudied part of the crypto crime ecosystem”, highlighting evidence that “virtual currency is the dominant choice for buyers and sellers of commercial child sexual abuse content” (Chainalysis, 2024).
Methodology
This study explored the connection between online behaviours and economic activities and men's sexual feelings towards and offences against children. Data was collected from 4,918 men in Australia, the UK, and the USA, with participants divided into three groups:
No sexual feelings towards or offences committed against children (77.5% of participants)
Sexual feelings only towards children (11.5% of participants)
Committed sexual offences against children (11.0% of participants)
The results are shown using odds ratios (ORs) and with a 95% confidence interval (CI). The OR shows how likely an event is to happen in one group compared to another group. The 95% CI is a range of numbers that shows where the true result is expected to fall 95% of the time if the study was repeated. If the range does not include 1.0, it means there is a significant difference between the groups. If the range does include 1.0, there is no clear evidence of a difference between the groups.
This confidence interval range is shown by the error bars on figures 1, 2, 3 and 4.
Research findings
The study looked at four areas of online spending to understand potential financial patterns associated with sexual feelings or offences towards children: online economic activities, cryptocurrency ownership and use, purchasing sexual content online, and being approached online by someone selling sexual services.
Online economic activities
Men in both the sexual feelings and offending groups had a higher likelihood of more frequent engagement in online activities, such as online shopping, online dating, and online gaming, compared to men with no sexual feelings or offences against children.
Online shopping: Those with sexual feelings only were 1.65 times more likely to shop online often, while offenders were 2.09 times more likely to shop online, compared to other men.
Online dating subscriptions: Men with sexual feelings towards children were 2.48 times more likely to subscribe to an online dating site, while offenders were 3.84 times more likely to subscribe to an online dating site, compared to other men.
Online gaming: Men with sexual feelings were 1.72 times more likely to play online games frequently, while offenders were 1.89 times more likely to play online games frequently, compared to other men .
Figure 1. Odds of online economic activity frequency
Figure 2. Odds of owning and using cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrency ownership and use
Men with sexual feelings towards children were 1.42 times more likely to own cryptocurrency and 2.08 times more likely to use it for purchases compared to other men. Offenders showed even higher rates, being 2.36 times more likely to own and 4.30 times more likely to use cryptocurrency for online purchases.
Purchasing sexual content online
Men with sexual feelings were about 2–3 times more likely to purchase sexual content, such as webcam services or nude videos, than other men. In contrast, offenders were 7–12 times more likely – with certain purchases, such as livestreams, 11 times more common. Offenders were much more likely than those with sexual feelings only to purchase all types of sexual content.
Figure 3. Odds of purchasing sexual content online
Approached online by someone exchanging their sexual abuse for money or other material gains
Men with sexual feelings towards children were 3.42 times more likely to be approached by a child exchanging their sexual abuse for money or other material gains, but showed no increase in the likelihood of approaches from adults. In contrast, offenders were 3 times more likely to be approached by adults and nearly 14 times more likely to be approached by children trading their sexual abuse [1].
Figure 4. Odds of being approached by person online selling sexual services
Conclusion and recommendations
Men who have sexual feelings toward children or who have committed sexual offences against children engage more frequently in certain online activities, like online shopping, dating, and gaming. They are also more likely to own and use cryptocurrency, with offenders having particularly high usage. Buying sexual content online is common among these groups, especially offenders. A significant risk factor for offending is being approached by someone offering sexual services (adults) or exchanging their sexual abuse for money or material gain (children). These online spending patterns could be a red flag to assist financial institutions and law enforcement in tracking child sex offenders.
These findings underscore that specific online financial behaviours, such as increased cryptocurrency use and frequent purchases of explicit content, can indicate potential for offending. For financial institutions and law enforcement, monitoring such patterns provides opportunities to identify and disrupt offending behaviours before harm occurs.
Recommendations for prevention include:
Recommendation 1. Expand financial monitoring. Many financial institutions are currently proactively seeking to detect payments associated with specific forms of offending against children such as livestreaming of sexual abuse or travelling for sex offending. However, the financial patterns associated with offending in this study suggest that detection processes could be sensitised to a broader array of suspicious transactions linked to offending risk.
Recommendation 2. Share information. The findings of the study point to cross-platform patterns of economic behaviour associated with child sexual exploitation and abuse offending across a range of services, including online shopping, dating, and gaming, cryptocurrency, and pornography. Enhanced information sharing between law enforcement, technology companies and financial institutions is critical to detecting these patterns and disrupting or intervening early in offending.
Limitations
The study has several limitations. Participants were recruited through an online survey panel company, which may affect the generalisability of the findings.
Additionally, because the study relies on self-reported data, there is a potential for social desirability bias due to the sensitive nature of the questions. Given the variation in the age of consent across jurisdictions and offence categories, the study defines a child as anyone under 18 when measuring online offending, which may have classified some legal sexual activities as illegal. Nonetheless, survey findings on the prevalence of sexual feelings and behaviours toward children are consistent with those of other studies.
More information
Suggested citation: Salter, M., Whitten, T., & Woodlock, D. (2025). Following the money: Examining online financial behaviour to detect child sexual exploitation. In: Searchlight 2025 – Childlight's Flagship Report. Edinburgh: Childlight – Global Child Safety Institute
Researchers: Professor Michael Salter, Dr Tyson Whitten, Dr Delanie Woodlock, Mr Matt Tyler, Ms Georgia Naldrett, Professor Jan Breckenridge, Professor Justine Nolan, Dr Noam Peleg
Study partners: Jesuit Social Services
Registered study protocol: OSF Registries | The nature of online offending against children: Population-based data from Australia, UK and the USA
Ethics Approval: University of New South Wales (HC220317)
Advisory committee members: Ashley Katz (Director, Child Protection International Partnerships, National Office for Child Safety, Attorney-General’s Department), Detective Superintendent Denzil Clark (Operations Coordinator, Queensland Police Service), Mark Dickson, Executive Manager, Financial Crime, Westpac Group), Dr Sarah Napier (Research Manager, OSEC Research Program, Australian Institute of Criminology), Carol Ronken (Director of Research, Bravehearts), Danielle Kelly (Head of Capacity and Prevention, ICMEC Australia)
Funding acknowledgement: The research leading to these results has received funding from Westpac as part of the Safer Families, Safer Communities Program. The work of the East Asia and Pacific Hub of Childlight at the University of New South Wales is supported by a collaboration agreement with the University of Edinburgh, under the core grant provided to Childlight – Global Child Safety Institute by the Human Dignity Foundation (grant agreement number [INT21-01]).
[1] - Our survey asked about children “selling sexual services” to aid participant understanding. However, Childlight views the purchase of sexual services from a child as sexual exploitation in all circumstances.