National Child Exploitation (CE) Awareness Day (18th March) brings to the forefront issues surrounding CE, and encourages people to learn how to think, spot and speak out against abuse.
Child sexual abuse (CSA), including child sexual exploitation (CSE) is a hidden form of child abuse and it is not widely understood or recognised in society, with a deep shame and stigma attached to it. Because CSA is hidden in plain sight, it often goes underreported; however, reporting rates have dramatically increased over the last 10 years – 104,345 child sexual offences recorded by the police in the year to June 2025, up by 330% from 24,274 offences in the year to June 2013.
These statistics likely still do not reflect the true scale of the problem facing young people, especially when taking into consideration the evolving threat that technology and AI poses (such as the recent reports of X’s AI Grok producing sexual imagery of women and children.) The government’s 2025 Freedom From Violence and Abuse strategy looks in detail at the government’s ambitious plan to half violence against women and girls (VAWG) in the next 10 years, including disrupting sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation as preventative measures to reduce long term harms to women and girls.
The standout items from the policy about supporting young victim-survivors of sexual abuse include:
- The government plans to introduce new police powers through legislation, e.g. making grooming an aggravating factor in sentencing for childhood sexual offences, which will be key in prosecution for offenders, especially when the abuse is technology-facilitated.
- There is an acknowledgement of the need to improve safeguarding procedures for when sexual abuse is happening in the family home, which currently lets down young people.
- An emphasis on removing strangulation pornography from the mainstream as alarming amounts of children were accessing this, and 35% of 16-34 year olds had been strangled during consensual sex.
- A separate explanatory note about how to support male victim-survivors is included, which is positive that they’re being recognised.
Understandably, this strategy is aimed at women and girls as they statistically face the majority of the violence highlighted in the strategy, however it completely ignores male victim-survivors of CSA and CSE due to its remit. We know that boys are also subjected to child sexual abuse too; this cohort makes up around half of children under social care for sexual abuse concerns in 2024.
The stigma that boys face is not often acknowledged or addressed, furthering the disparities in recognition, understanding and support that these boys receive, often linked to the sexist and misogynistic attitudes highlighted in the strategy. By naming women and girls as the victims of sexual crimes, the government has inadvertently made CSA and CSE a ‘girls’ problem’ which further compounds the stigma boys and men face. We already know that male victim-survivors of CSE are often identified as being subjected to child criminal exploitation (CCE) and don’t receive the support they so need and deserve.
Schools have understandably had a lot of responsibility put on them to tackle sexist and misogynistic attitudes amongst young people, but schools are already so stretched that without additional funding, it will be difficult to implement.
Overall, the government’s VAWG strategy has set out some clear goals for how to support women and girls who are subjected to misogynistic violence, but the government itself decided against recognising misogyny as a hate crime. So, the strategy will be limited in its remit, especially when it comes to prosecution, when misogyny is an aggravating factor. Ultimately, it will be difficult to create the whole society change that the VAWG strategy lays out, especially when the climate of the government itself is misogynistic and public, powerful people are being associated with one of the largest sex trafficking operations in history, with little to no consequence.
If you or a young person you know would benefit from support around experience or risk of sexual exploitation, please contact us:
You can make a referral, or contact us on 0113 2430036 if you need any advice.
Find out more about our Young People team.