Draft content added
Child sexual abuse material is assessed in line with the Sentencing Council’s Sexual Offences Definitive Guideline. The Indecent Photographs of Children section (page 34) sets out the categories used to classify such material.
Category A: Images depicting penetrative sexual activity, sexual activity involving an animal, or sadistic conduct.
Category B: Images depicting non-penetrative sexual activity.
Category C: Other indecent images that do not fall within Categories A or B.
Category C includes, for example, images showing partially nude, nude, or topless sexual posing.
Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole number.
This chart shows the severity of child sexual abuse images according to UK Sentencing Council categories A, B and C.
As assessors we have ‘eyes on’ every single image we review, and the severity of the child sexual abuse material (CSAM) we see no longer surprises us. Each image we encounter is assigned at random, so we cannot predict its severity in advance. We must be prepared for anything.
To determine severity, we must pay close attention to the imagery, ensuring we don’t miss a vital section of a long abuse video, or a particular section of a complex grid image depicting multiple children. We want our final grades to represent the true severity that the victims have experienced in that piece of imagery.
When we assess imagery, we grade it using the UK Sentencing Council's Sexual Offences Definitive Guidelines: categories A, B and C. Under these guidelines, Category A material is the most severe, however it’s not always the Category A material that can feel most impactful.
Sometimes, other aspects of the imagery make it feel severe: a distressed child, or a child we have seen being abused so many times that we have come to generate an unfortunate familiarity with their images.
Some of the material we encounter falls outside of IWF’s remit, and can be particularly harrowing. We’re trained and prepared to see the sexual abuse of children, however we are less equipped to see imagery depicting violence or cruelty to children, animal abuse, or gore content.