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Meri Trustline

 

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Meri Trustline is a child reporting portal that allows children to report their own sexual imagery. It is a product of the partnership between the RATI Foundation, an India-based charity focused on protecting children, women, and other marginalised genders from sexual and gender-based violence, and the IWF. Meri Trustline connects a child with a counsellor, who will provide emotional support and if applicable, create a secure, single-use link that the child can use to upload intimate imagery of themselves for our analysts to assess against UK law.   

Developed by the non-profit technology organisation Tech Matters in collaboration with the IWF, the platform builds on Tech Matters’ existing cloud-based contact centre software, Aselo. Aselo is already used by the RATI Foundation to run Meri Trustline, a helpline supporting children in India who are experiencing online harms.

The Trustline can be accessed via a range of communication channels, including WhatsApp, email, and X (formerly Twitter), as well as a traditional phone number.

When a young person raises concerns about online sexual images, a Trustline counsellor can use the tailored platform to generate a secure reporting link and share it directly with the child. The link provides the young person with a single-use, secure webpage through which they can submit images and URLs directly to IWF analysts for assessment.

This design reduces the burden on users by making it easier to report potentially distressing content in a safe, supportive, counsellor-led environment.

In 2025 we received 184 reports through the Meri Trustline reporting tool.

  • 86 of these were assessed as criminal, which is an increase on just 10 reports actioned last year. Although the number remains modest, it represents a significant rise in the use of the tool.

All 86 reports found to contain criminal imagery were of girls aged 16-17.

Meri Trustline reports by severity

  • Category A: Category A: Images involving penetrative sexual activity, images involving sexual activity with an animal; or sadism.
  • Category B: Category B: Images involving non-penetrative sexual activity.
  • Category C: Category C: Other indecent images not falling within categories A or B

The chart shows that almost half (48%) of all the Meri Trustline reports that showed child sexual abuse showed Category C imagery which includes, for example, imagery showing partially nude, nude, or topless sexual posing.

 

IWF Internet Content Analyst
Frontline observations

Some readers may find the following descriptions distressing, please feel free to skip this section.

Meri Trustline is a service that has grown significantly over the past year. While the overall number of reports it generates remains comparatively low, they offer a clear view on the challenges children in India are facing. By the time young people reach us through Meri Trustline, their intimate images are often already online, circulating widely across multiple sites. All of these reports were submitted by girls, a direct contrast to Report Remove where boys make up the majority of reporters. Our Meri Trustline reports show us not only that material is being shared without consent, but when we see this material online alongside misogynistic comments, we understand it could be driven by humiliation, degradation or societal attitudes. 

Sometimes we receive reports from RATI that are submitted by a counsellor on behalf of a child. This may be because the digital literacy of the child means they are unable to navigate the reporting process themselves. The child may feel too fearful to ask another person or organisation for help. When RATI passes these reports to us, they frequently describe the high levels of distress children are experiencing, including fear about who has seen the content or what might happen if family or friends discover it.   

Partnerships like this ensure that children receive a combination of emotional support from counsellors that truly understand the harms children in India are facing, combined with our expertise in assessing and removing child sexual abuse material.