Preventing online child sexual abuse –the role of sexual education
Emma Pösö
Advisor / Analyst
Child Protection and The Finnish Hotline Nettivihje
Save the Children Finland
Online child sexual abuse stands among the most urgent challenges of our time.
The Finnish hotline Nettivihje aims to
1. Promote the rapid removal of child sexual abuse material from the web
2. Prevent children and young people from becoming victims of sexual abuse
What is child sexual abuse?
• Any sexual act between an adult and a minor or between two minors when one exerts power over the other
• All acts that violate a child’s sexual autonomy and integrity
• Sexual activity without consent
• Can happen both in offline and online environments
• Can target any child, undependent of their sex, sexuality, age and gender
Forms of online child sexual abuse include
• Grooming
• Sexual extortion
• Unconsensual sharing of nude images
• Child sexual abuse material
• AI-generated / facilitated child sexual abuse
Online child sexual abuse can happen in all digital environments.
Sexual rights, sexuality & sexual education
Building a child’s self-esteem, teaching them to set boundaries, and helping them understand their own body are central to effective prevention.
Without adequate and evidence-based sexual education, a child:
• Cannot develop a healthy relationship with their body and learn to value and respect it
• Will not know their own and others’ sexual rights and freedoms
• Cannot identify if they have been victims of sexual abuse
• May learn harmful sexual behaviours and commit sexual offences themselves
Adequate sexual education should include:
Evidence based sexual education
• Gives knowledge, skills and capabilities
• Strengthens emotional skills
• Talk about body parts by their proper names -> do not create shame and provide the child with words to talk about their own body and related concerns and questions
• It is good to start from the positive aspects of sexuality
o Right to information
o Interest in one's own body and the body of another
o The right to one's own body and boundaries
• Talking about topics that are perceived as difficult signals that you can tell and ask questions about anything
• If you don't know how to answer the child's question, that's okay. Tell them you’ll find out and get back to them!
How does sexual education prevent sexual abuse?
• Knowing one’s own and others’ boundaries & consent
→ knowing where one can touch and be touched by another person, how to safeguard own boundaries
• Knowing the names of body parts
→ being able to name where hurt & if someone has touched inappropriately
• Knowing about bad secret, good secret
→ When to disclose to a trusted adult
• Safety skills online and offline
→ To recognise if something is odd and know how to act (say no, leave the situation and disclose to a trusted adult)
• A child’s own worth, a child is valuable as they are
→ A confident child is better able to protect themselves
” An adult’s
discomfort with discussing sexuality and sexual abuse
should never
stand in the way of a child’s right to age-appropriate sexual education.
Sexual education materials produced in the CSAPE project
