Some readers may find the following descriptions distressing, please feel free to skip this section.
Images and videos of older teens are usually 'self-generated', and the majority that we find online depicts girls, but the reasons behind their capture, creation and distribution are varied. Some imagery, children tell us, has been ‘leaked’ without their knowledge, and some may have been ‘faked’, potentially by AI tools. Other instances depict aggressive and humiliating sexually coerced extortion. Some victims may not have known they were being recorded during a coerced interaction. Others may be unaware that their imagery is sought after, regularly posted and shared.
The Report Remove tool provides UK-based children with a place to self-report imagery of themselves. Our collaboration with the UK Home Office’s Child Abuse Image Database (CAID), law enforcement and charity partners helps us confirm the ages of older child victims and to take steps to prevent their repeated victimisation online. Some of this content may have been online for years. Some adult ‘self-reporters’ ask us for help in removing online indecent imagery captured when they were teenagers, which appears years later in online public spaces.
The physical development of older teens can make it difficult to distinguish between them and adults. This means we frequently request age verification to ensure we are correctly identifying child sexual abuse material rather than intimate image abuse involving an adult.
Age verification may come from traditional sources such as UK or international police forces, child reporting services like Report Remove or Meri Trustline, or other hotlines and trusted partners. Our commitment to accurate age verification enables us to confidently hash and remove thousands of images depicting older teenagers, ensuring our assessments are as precise as possible.
We see a demand for indecent material of older children. Some websites promote indecent imagery of older teens as ‘leaked’, ‘exposed’ or ‘teen’ material, using derogatory language to celebrate exploiting them. On websites like these, collections of indecent material are advertised, promoted, branded, monetised and directly sold for payment.
Some websites expose more than just the imagery of children, but also their apparent name and location. Comments from web users encourage such posting, ask for more content or request more information about the child. The ease of accessing shareable links to ‘full collections’ of imagery encourages the onward sharing and collecting of indecent imagery of older children. These victims are children, and every repost and onward share is degrading and cruel.
