What to Do When You Come Across Child Sexual Abuse Material On the Internet?

Child Sexual Abuse Material is the preferable alternative to using the term ‘Child Pornography’. It refers to material/content (videos/images/text/audio) depicting acts of sexual abuse against a child. Material depicting child is sexually explicit positions as well as those focusing explicitly on genitalia of a child may also be considered Child Sexual Abuse Material.

Click through below to know more about the issue:

1. What are the consequences of searching, or viewing or collecting child sexual abuse material (child pornography)?

• Prison: The law in India (and across the world) is extremely stringent when it comes to the issue of child sexual abuse material (child pornography). It is a  criminal offence even if you are browsing and searching for child sexual abuse imagery and if caught, can lead to several years imprisonment. And it doesn’t matter if the child in the video/image is Indian or not.
• The Long Hard Legal Journey: If prisons in India are hellholes, then the paths leading to them are well and truly the road to hell. It is a crushing and draining process that takes a toll financially, mentally and socially. By the time prison is reached, the journey breaks you and the people around you.
• Immediate Disruption to Your Life: The first things that go when one is caught with CSAM is dignity and privacy. There will be an extensive and invasive even reckless media and social media outrage & investigation. All this has an effect on every aspect of one’s life – personal, social and professional. The outrage and indignity may spill over to family, friends, colleagues and they will have no choice but to distance you.
• Longterm Disruption to Your Life: Once outed as a sexual offender, it will be extremely difficult for you to rehabilitate yourself socially and professionally. You may find yourself without jobs or friends. You may in essence be excluded and ostracized. There are also chances that family, friends and colleagues may face long term consequences and stigma of being associated with you.
• Mental Stress: The stress of the legal process, prison, short-term and long-term disruptions and the almost permanent stigma of being labelled a ‘child sex offender’ will be extremely stressful and harmful for your mental well-being.
• Child sexual abuse imagery is a Crime Scene: You are not watching pornography. You are watching a crime scene for which, possibly, a child or many children were groomed, betrayed and abused. You are watching a document of real abuse.
• You are fueling an unethical, exploitative industry: Each bit of illegal content you watch is made and distributed either by unscrupulous individuals, corporations or cartels. Each click and view that you give the content results in profit for these entities. And when they make more content for you, more children are abused. It is a terrifying cycle of exploitation.
• Every child around you is at-risk: You may feel that by looking at and fantasizing around sexually explicit and illegal content featuring children you are displacing your worst impulses. However, there is some (inconclusive) research that points out that watching this may lead you to acting out. This puts every child around you, especially those children whom you know and interact with at-risk of abuse. Your refusal to act positively on your impulses may possibly damage, sometimes irreparably, the life of a child. A child that you and people around you may possibly know.
• You maybe an at-risk individual: Even if you are not caught, you will always remain at-risk of being caught. This may lead to feelings of isolation, guilt, stress, shame, remorse that may gradually break-down your mental health and wellbeing. And this will tend to have effects on all parts of your life.
• Pornography leads to desensitization & dysfunction: What has been proven without a doubt is that watching a lot of porn will lead you to watching more quantities of porn and more extreme varieties of porn. And the amount of the pleasure you derive from the whole exercise reduces progressively. Watching extreme and illegal porn has been shown to directly related to rising cases of juvenile erectile dysfunction.

2. What are the consequences of child sexual abuse material on children?

• Hurts the Dignity of Children:  Child Sexual Abuse Material (Child Pornography) is a document of child abuse. The child featured in the content is being directly abused and presented as a sex object. And by viewing it for gratification, you are further commodifying the child and harming their dignity.
• Children have been harmed & traumatized during the making of the content: There is a chance that the child featured has been abused multiple times. Child sex offenders often record the act of abuse so that they can use the recording to threaten and entrap the child into a cycle of abuse. Once entrapped, the child goes through unimaginable trauma and severe abuse.
• Continued Trauma & Delayed Healing: As long as the content is on the internet and people are viewing it, the child may not begin to recover and heal from the abuse. As long as the child knows that somewhere on the internet his betrayal and abuse is still being commodified and witnessed, they may not be able to get over the trauma and begin to heal. Delay in healing may result in long term or permanent disruption of the child’s life.
• Prolonged Suffering: It is unbelievable the scale at which abuse can disrupt a child’s life. The child featured in the content may suffer stigma, repeated abuse, bullying, mental health breakdowns including suicidal tendencies, discontinuation of studies, long term social and professional exclusion… the list of sufferings that the child may go through is endless.
• Multiple Exploitations: There is a high possibility that the child is being drugged or trafficked, subjected to forceful prostitution or growing up in an unhealthy environment. Their abuse can be one aspect of many of their other forms of exploitations. Unscrupulous people and platforms make money out of exploiting children. Sexually explicit illegal content is produced and children are exploited on a large and inhumane scale so that a few people and corporations may profit. Each view and click fuels this exploitative industry which then abuses other children.
• Used for Grooming: Child sexual abuse content is used to desensitize and groom potential child victims. Child sexual abuse material is an instrument that perpetrates the abuse of children.

3. What does the Law on Child Sexual Abuse Imagery (Child Pornography) in India say?

The Indian Law is pretty comprehensive in addressing the issues around child pornography or child sexual abuse imagery or as the law calls it – representation of a child engaged in real or simulated sexual activities. This includes digital manipulation, illustration, animations, drawing etc. According to the POCSO Act (section 11, 13, 14), IT Act (section 66E, 67) & IPC (section 292, 354A, 354C), the following activities are punishable-

• Browsing, seeking & searching for child sexual abuse imagery
• Viewing child sexual abuse imagery (including online voyeurism)
• Downloading child sexual abuse imagery
• Storing, storing for commercial purposes and collecting child sexual abuse imagery
• Advertising child sexual abuse imagery
• Distributing or sharing or transmitting child sexual abuse imagery
• Hosting child sexual abuse imagery
• Publishing child sexual abuse imagery
• Producing child sexual abuse imagery
• Taping, photographing, filming or recording child sexual abuse imagery
• Using or threatening to use child or part of the body of a child for pornography (in a real or simulated sex act or indecent/obscene gesture)
• Engaging in sexual activity on any media with a child
• Creation of child pornography for personal or commercial use, or storage/distribution of the material
• Preparing and grooming the child towards producing child sexual abuse imagery
• Showing pornography to a child
• Facilitating, promoting, abetting and assisting in any of the above
• Knowing that someone is watching, browsing, soliciting, downloading, seeking child sexual abuse imagery or abusing children or even just suspecting that someone is doing the above, and not reporting it to the police
• The Punishment: Using a child for pornographic purposes is a non-bailable offence and depending on the degree of harm caused to the child can attract anywhere in between 6 years to life imprisonment. Viewing, browsing, storing, downloading, showing pornography to a child can attract up to 3 or 5 years of jailtime.

Where to Report if You Stumble Across Child Sexual Abuse Material on the Internet?

You can report anonymously. By reporting the content on hotlines, you are blocking and taking down images at source. You are allowing a child to be safe, recover and heal.

If You Stumble Across Child Sexual Abuse Imagery Online,
Report the Content on Cybercrime.gov.in

Report the Content Anonymously on Aarambh India’s Hotline.

If you Want to Report Child Sexual Abuse Cases,
Report the Content at the POCSO e-box.

If you see a child in distress,
Call 1098.