Some readers may find the following descriptions distressing, please feel free to skip this section.
We have ‘eyes on’ every single image graded, and the severity of the child sexual abuse material we see no longer surprises us.
To determine severity, we must pay close attention to images, ensuring we don’t miss a vital section of a complex grid image, an image depicting multiple children, or a composite image of multiple parts. We want our final grade to represent the true severity that the victims have experienced in that image.
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.
The grade we apply most frequently is Category C. We encounter multiple large image sets that depict children, mostly girls, posed sexually in studio settings. The images are professionally taken but depict full or partial exposure of a child’s genital area or pubescent breasts. These sets are so large, and feature so many unique victims that their volume can influence our data. Many of these sets reach us from our work with CAID, whilst others are found online by analysts.
Our analysts also locate many self-generated Category C images. These images are published in online forums at high volume and frequency, and contribute to a significant proportion of analyst work. These images share a theme in that they typically depict a girl alone with a device in a domestic setting, coerced into sexual activity by a remote offender.
We know that many of these Category C images are ‘stills’ cut from a video that the offender recorded during the online interaction. When posted in online forums these images act as a ‘preview’ to a downloadable video of the full online encounter. The videos escalate in severity, frequently showing masturbation (Category B) or penetration (Category A).
Sometimes, other aspects of the imagery, regardless of the assigned category of A,B or C, can make it feel severe: a distressed child, or a child we have seen 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 the 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.
