Users of Online Child Sexual Abuse Material

Abstract

Online communities on darknet contribute to sexual violence against children. They provide offender access to Child Sexual Abuse Material and to a group of peers that supports criminal activities. This article sheds light on online child sexual abusers and their justifications for Child Sexual Abuse (CSA). It describes different offender profiles and motivations for CSA, followed by a section on policing these offences. The article then lays out psychological models, such as cognitive distortions, that are used to understand pedophiles’ behavior. The discussion is complemented by direct citations from a darknet community of CSA offenders, showing that these models are not just theoretical considerations. The last part of the article concentrates on online communities of CSA offenders. It describes different types of members of such communities and explains how the communities support individual offenders and how they provide learning models that facilitate criminal behavior. The article concludes with a short reflection of its findings, including novel insights for investigators of these crimes and proposed venues for further research.

Full text

Vol.:(0123456789)
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Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-023-09611-4
Users ofOnline Child Sexual Abuse Material
SallaHuikuri1
Accepted: 31 August 2023
© The Author(s) 2023
Abstract
Online communities on darknet contribute to sexual violence against children. They provide offender access to Child Sexual
Abuse Material and to a group of peers that supports criminal activities. This article sheds light on online child sexual abus-
ers and their justifications for Child Sexual Abuse (CSA). It describes different offender profiles and motivations for CSA,
followed by a section on policing these offences. The article then lays out psychological models, such as cognitive distor-
tions, that are used to understand pedophiles’ behavior. The discussion is complemented by direct citations from a darknet
community of CSA offenders, showing that these models are not just theoretical considerations. The last part of the article
concentrates on online communities of CSA offenders. It describes different types of members of such communities and
explains how the communities support individual offenders and how they provide learning models that facilitate criminal
behavior. The article concludes with a short reflection of its findings, including novel insights for investigators of these crimes
and proposed venues for further research.
Keywords Child Sexual Abuse· Child Sexual Abuse Material· Online communities· Dark web darknet· Cognitive
distortions
Users ofOnline Child Sexual Abuse Material
The cyber space is a mediator and enabler of all kinds of
sexual violence against children (Durkin and Bryant 1995;
Owens etal. 2016). According to routine activity theory, it
offers not only an easy access to suitable child victims for
a motivated offender but also an unchecked environment to
perform Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) offences (Babchishin
etal. 2015; Fortin etal. 2018; INTERPOL 2020). As the
Interpol points out, the COVID-19 pandemic contributed
to these enabling structures. Regarding the victims,
lockdowns increased the amount of unsupervised time,
which children spent online under the radar of their
guardians, who otherwise might have noticed signs of
abuse (Europol 2020a; INTERPOL 2020). The offenders
also had more time to spend online. In the beginning of
the pandemic, Europol reported a significant increase in
European peer-to-peer sharing networks for Child Sexual
Abuse Material (CSAM) (Europol 2020a).
The creation and maintenance of online communities
are of central importance for understanding CSAM-related
crimes and offending in the cyber space. Darknet offers fer-
tile grounds for offenders to contact their peers and upload,
download, or trade CSAM. The Tor Browser (TOR) is the
most used application to access darknet, and it bases on a
network of thousands of servers that reroute the user’s IP
address, hence making it impossible to identify its origin
(Gannon etal. 2023).
According to criminal justice statistics, 1–3% of CSA
offenders are female, and the rest are male (Weinsheimer
etal. 2017). Moreover, approximately every fifth girl and 1
in 13 boys experience sexual violence before the age of 18
(Stoltenborgh etal. 2011). Despite overgeneralization, this
article refers to the offenders with male pronouns and to
victims with female pronouns.
Several studies show that the vast majority of all online
offenders have contact with their peers (Beech etal. 2008;
Merdian, etal., 2013; Shelton etal. 2016) and that access to
the community of like-minded facilitates deviant behavior
(Krone 2004). On the one hand, the “normalization”
* Salla Huikuri
salla.huikuri@gov.fi
1 Finnish Ministry oftheInterior, Kirkkokatu 12, P.O. Box26,
00023Government,Helsinki, Finland

Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology
1 3
of sexual violence gives the perpetrator a sense that his
behavior is more common than it actually is (de Young
1988). Thus, online interaction with peers may facilitate—
logistically, emotionally, and socially—CSA offending. On
the other hand, online communities may substitute physical
relationships as CSA offenders sometimes exercise age plays
with each other (Quinn and Forsyth 2013; Merdian etal.
2013a, b; Carr 2007).
This article aims at addressing the question of how dark-
net online communities of child sexual abusers enable sexual
violence against children. By so doing, it sheds light into the
recent scholarly research on online CSA and the writings of
the offenders.
This article starts with a description of different offender
profiles and motivations for CSA, followed by a section
on policing these offences. The article then lays out psy-
chological models, such as cognitive distortions, that are
used to understand pedophiles’ behavior. The discussion
is complemented by direct citations from a darknet com-
munity of CSA offenders, showing that the models are not
just theoretical considerations. The last part of the article
concentrates on online communities of CSA offenders. It
describes different types of members of such communi-
ties and explains how the communities support individual
offenders and how they provide learning models that facil-
itate their criminal behavior. The article concludes with
a short reflection of its findings and venues for further
research.
Child Sexual Abusers Online
Profiles ofOnline Child Sexual Abuse Material
Offenders
Pedophilia is a mental health diagnosis and as such defined
as persistent and intense sexual attraction to prepubescent
children. The attraction may lead to sexual urges and
physical abuse of children, but also to mere fantasies
(American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The focus of
this article is on persons who commit online offences. Not
all of them are pedophiles but may offend amongst others
for financial profit or out of curiosity for CSAM contents
(Beech etal. 2008; Sheldon 2011; Young 2008). Therefore,
the article refers to them as CSA or CSAM offenders.
CSAM documents sexually abusive acts to a child
(ECPAT International 2016). In over 140 countries, simple
possession of CSAM is a criminal act, but the adequacy of
domestic legislations for criminalization of further online
CSA offences varies significantly from country to country,
posing obstacles for policing these crimes (International
Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, 2018). Online
CSA covers all sexually exploitative acts “carried out
against a child that have, at some stage, a connection to the
online environment” (ECPAT International 2016). These
include (i) manipulating or threatening child to perform
sexual acts in front of a webcam; (ii) grooming; and (iii)
distribution, dissemination, importing, exporting, offering,
selling, possession of, or knowingly obtaining access to
CSAM (ECPAT International 2016; Europol 2020b). Since
these offences are frequently global by nature, international
cooperation is a fruitful way to advance their policing.
Research on the demographics of CSAM offenders sug-
gests that an average online offender could be a single Cau-
casian male, who has attended college, had issues with sub-
stance abuse, and has mental health problems (Bourke and
Hernandez 2009; Webb etal. 2007). Up to 20% have expe-
rienced some sort of sexual abuse as children and have been
convicted for a sexual crime (see amongst others Elliott etal.
2009, 2013; Long etal. 2012; McCarthy 2010; McManus
etal. 2015; Owens etal. 2016; Seto etal. 2006; Shelton etal.
2016; Wolak etal. 2003; Young 2008).
The motivations for CSAM use could roughly be organ-
ized into satisfaction of sexual attraction to children and
into emotional purposes in the sense that CSAM allows the
escape from negative feelings, such as loneliness, depres-
sion, anxiety, sexual frustration, or boredom (Babchishin
etal. 2018; Merdian, etal., 2013; Morgan and Lambie
2019). The online era has also brought new motivations
into picture, such as using CSAM out of curiosity or for
collecting different types of grotesque materials (Hartman
etal. 1984; Jenkins 2001; Krone 2004; Soldino etal. 2020).
Several studies distinct between online and offline CSA
offenders (or non-contact and contact offenders) where the
former ones commit their crimes purely in the cyber space
and latter ones physically abuse children (Babchishin etal.
2018, 2015; Henshaw etal. 2017; McManus etal. 2016;
Elliott etal. 2009; Seto 2013). Internet indeed provides
a gateway to groom children for contact sexual violence
(McCarthy 2010). It has been found that contact offenders
have more online contacts with their peers and maintain
larger collections of CSAM than online offenders (McManus
etal. 2015; Owens etal. 2016). Accordingly, the distinction
between online and offline abusers is rather insignificant
(Broome etal. 2018; Owens etal. 2016; Shelton etal. 2016).
Wilson and Jones suggest that internet offers a space for
pseudo-reality, where fantasies meet CSA through the use
and production of CSAM (Wilson and Jones 2008; Merdian
etal., 2018; Merdian etal. 2013a, b). CSAM may reinforce
fantasies and by so doing incite offenders to produce cor-
responding real-life materials or experiences (Bartels etal.
2019; Wilson and Jones 2008). Thus, fantasies may facilitate

Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology
1 3
the planning of an offence or generate sexual sensations that
lower self-control and by so doing smooth the way to physi-
cal CSA (Babchishin etal. 2018; Sheldon 2011; Sheldon
and Howitt 2007).
Differences Between Online andOffline Child Sexual
Abuse Offenders
A simplified way of making the distinction between con-
tact- and fantasy-driven CSA offenders is to observe the
environment and the result of their criminal activities.
Contact offenders victimize children by exercising physical
sexual violence against them (Broome etal. 2018), while
for fantasy offenders, the online environment is central for
offending (DeHart etal. 2017). By illegally using CSAM,
fantasy users re-victimize children who have already been
victimized by contact abusers (Seto 2013). However, since
the online environment is an integral part of nearly all CSA
cases, strict distinction between contact- and fantasy-driven
offenders is rather outdated, as Broome etal. (2018; Pow-
ell and Henry 2017) point out. Thus, instead, it is useful
to observe the intentions behind the online actions: is the
groomer interested in meeting the child in person, or does
he want her to perform sexual acts in front of a webcam?
Distant live streaming of CSA is a novel offence and dif-
fers from other online CSA crimes in two ways: It is finan-
cially motivated and has both virtual and physical elements
(Cubitt etal. 2021). The facilitators of live streaming ses-
sions are often the child’s family members and who commit
sexual violence in front of a webcam for financial benefit.
The customers, in turn, order virtual sessions and, e.g., spe-
cific acts of sexual violence to be conducted on the child vic-
tim without being physically present (ECPAT International
2020; Europol 2020b). The child victim and her molesters
are often based in the poor developing countries, such as the
Philippines, but the problem persists also in Europe (Europol
2020b).
Distant live streaming of CSA is particularly challenging
to police. When the streaming ends, the material is gone
unless the offender has captured it for his own use or for the
purpose of “capping,” that is editing, circulating, or trading
it (International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children,
2018). However, police cooperation between the Philippines
and Australia shows that it is not impossible to get hold of
the offenders. In 2018, the Philippines provided Australia
with a list of 118 arrested CSA offenders, and Australia
matched transactions of 299 Australian-based persons to
these offenders. Eventually, 256 persons were found to have
sent payments for live streaming facilitators in the Philip-
pines (Brown etal. 2020; Cubitt etal. 2021).
In addition to live streaming, Europol has recently
reported signs of emerging commercialization of CSAM in
both clear web and darknet. This is a new turn, since the
material has traditionally been available for free (Europol
2020b). Although the crime scene in the darknet evolves, the
takedown of a CSAM forum called “Boystown” is an exam-
ple of successful policing. Here, too, the arrest of four active
offenders behind the forum was a result of international
police cooperation. The investigations were initiated by
Germany, coordinated by the Europol, and implemented in
cooperation with The Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, USA,
and Canada (Bundeskriminalamt 2021; Europol 2021). This
case shows that despite the technical impediments posed by
the darknet, successful investigations of these forums are
possible (Gannon etal. 2023).
Justifications forSexual Violence Against
Children
The Concept ofCognitive Distortions
Cognitive distortions are used to understand CSA offenders’
behavior (Abel etal. 1984). These cognitions help to ration-
alize and justify illegal and deviant actions, because they are
based on distorted accounts about the victims, the world, and
the offender himself (Ward and Siegert 2002). Moreover,
they serve the purpose of freeing one from “anxiety, guilt
and loss of self-esteem that would usually result from an
individual committing behaviors contrary to the norms of
his society” (Abel etal. 1989, p. 137). As such, cognitive
distortions seek to explain why a very narrow group of peo-
ple can sexually abuse children (Howitt and Sheldon 2007).
Much of the research on cognitive distortions bases on
Ward and Keenan’s argument that cognitive distortions are
a result of implicit theories. For understanding the complexi-
ties of the world, a child creates causal theories, which help
her to make sense of her surroundings through predictions
about future events and others’ behavior (Ward and Keenan
1999). Thus, human beings construct the world mentally,
and it “is this construction that guides their actions and inter-
pretations of others’ actions” (Ward 2000, p. 498). This is
the window of opportunity for the formation of cognitive
distortions, which may appear if the person misinterprets
the basic concepts of the underlying the society.
Cognitive Distortions, Implicit Theories,
andNeutralizing Accounts ofCSA Offenders
Implicit theories of CSA offenders mostly circle around their
victims. To provide understanding to the psychology and
avenues of offending, this article cites chat discussions of
anonymous offenders active in a darknet forum. The forum
has been taken down by a LEA operation, and collection of
the data did not include any illegal actions, such as viewing
CSAM or participating in the chat discussions. According

Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology
1 3
to the concept on implicit theories, child sexual abusers fre-
quently assume that children are sexual beings, leading to
the idea that children in fact initiate and enjoy sex (Szumski
etal. 2018).
Attraction is present from birth and there have been
plenty of studies to confirm this fact. Hence if you
need a boy then there are boys that will need you.
Second, a belief of one’s own superiority justifies sexual
violence against children (Ward and Keenan 1999).
I think that humans just have this very unfortunate
tendency for self-destruction and denial of their own
nature, which historically had led to many disas-
ters, such as - Christianity (and all other abrahamic
religions of course), and in modern age it's more of
a mindset for cattle aka 99% of the population, hate
breeding for obvious natural phenomena such as boy-
lovers, or “paedophiles” as they would brand us.
Third, the idea of a dangerous world and that other people
seek to dominate the offender permits his own domination.
In such world, children may be perceived as the only ones
to be trusted (Bartels & Merdian 2016).
The DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Men-
tal Disorders] is a political document masquerading
as scientific/medical document. Why do you trust that
tyrannical document above your own instinct?
Fourth, the surrounding environment may also be thought
of being uncontrollable. In such case, the offender might
perceive himself as a victim of the child Ciardha and
Ward 2013).
If your pleasure is in and out of love, it CANNOT be
wrong. And only you TRULY know if this is so. […]
If they love you back enough to be willing and desirous
of sharing this pleasure with you, then, again, how on
this God's green earth can that EVER be wrong?
The last implicit theory considers caused harm to the
victim. On the one hand, caused harm can be belittled by
comparing it to arguably more harmful sexual violence. On
the other hand, sexual intercourse is arguably beneficial for
children and does not cause harm (Ward 2000).
if you want to hurt a kid then yes you are sick. if you
want to love a kid then you are not sick.
We are here to defend, protect, care for and raise our
beloved boys. They are not here simply to be our throw
away sex toys. The gifts of love and sex are freely
given in love, and enrich both. Bond both. Why dis-
tort that?
If the reality contradicts with these implicit theories,
it commonly leads to the offenders’ reinterpretation or
rejection of their argumentation (Ward and Keenan 1999).
To summarize, online offenders commonly perceive children
as sexual objects and by so doing justify their actions as not
being abusive (Howitt and Sheldon 2007).
In their seminal work, Abel etal. (1989) argue that cogni-
tive distortions are central for being able to sexually abuse
children and for avoiding feelings of guilt. More recently,
Howitt and Sheldon suggest that cognitive distortions are
not necessarily distortions, but rather “cognitions conductive
to offending.” Thus, their origins may not lie in the need to
justify criminal acts, but in distorted childhood experiences
(Howitt and Sheldon 2007; Sheldon 2011). Hence, the argu-
ment of children being sexual beings may derive from the
offender having been sexually abused as a child, in which
case online CSA would be the result of traumatic childhood
experiences (Babchishin etal. 2011, 2015).
Steel etal. (2020) identify three mechanisms of cogni-
tive distortions that appear at different stages of offending.
First, long-term distortions, such as childhood experience
of being sexually abused, originate from the history of the
offender and facilitate offending by normalizing sexual
violence against children (for childhood abuse and sexual
offending, see Seto and Lalumiére 2010). Second, short-term
distortions appear shortly before the offence, for instance,
when the offender, in the state of arousal, thinks that sexual
abuse of children would be acceptable (Ariely and Loewen-
stein 2006). Third, post hoc cognitions, such as classical
minimizations, serve as rationalizations and justifications for
offences (Ward and Keenan 1999). Recent studies find that
online offenders often perceive the cyber space and child
victims as fictive (Paquette and Cortoni 2020; Soldino etal.
2020).
While cognitive distortions explain why some individu-
als sexually violate children, the concept of neutralizing
accounts concentrates on explicit justifications for CSA
offending (Durkin & Bryant 1999). While neutralization
“precedes the act and hence allows it to happen by sup-
planting moral constraints” (Hamlin 1988; Sykes and Matza
1957), accounts are linguistic means to explain questionable
acts and their consequences. Scott and Lyman identify two
types of accounts, namely justifications and excuses. With
justifications, the perpetrator admits his responsibility but
denies that his act is reprehensible. With excuses, he admits
the inappropriateness of his act but refuses to take respon-
sibility for it (Scott and Lyman 1968). Thus, neutralizations
and justifications allow the perpetrator to feel better about
himself and about his deeds, to mentally escape responsibil-
ity, and repeat criminal behavior (O’Halloran and Quayle
2010).
Durkin and Bryant were among the first ones to analyze
neutralizing accounts of CSA offenders in an online setting
(Durkin and Bryant 1995, 1999). They found that CSA
offenders condemn their condemners by arguing that the

Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology
1 3
society unjustly riots against them and restricts the rights
of children for love and sexuality (Sykes and Matza 1957).
Most people just think it’s wrong, they can’t tell you
exactly why they believe things such as “kids aren’t
sexual” “kids don’t know what they want” “kids
aren’t ready,” they just do. Only the people interested
in having sex with kids or the very very very rare
open minded adult who actually cares about pedo-
philes’ rights bother to question those views.
Offenders also deny causing injury or harm to children,
which may lead to the argument that children actually ben-
efit from sex (O’Halloran and Quayle 2010).
We’re not responsible for the fact that (little) chil-
dren, and even baby’s, can get horny and have
orgasms; that’s just nature. What we can do is to give
them the most beautiful things in life they deserve;
love, attraction and let them enjoy their sexuality like
it is supposed to be!
According to the concept of appeals to loyalties, pedo-
philes perceive themselves as the emancipators of chil-
dren’s right to sexuality (de Young 1988).
In attempts to “protect” children from “predators,”
advocates seem also to have managed to convolute
and suppress child sexuality as well as inhibit enjoy-
able physical activities between adults and children.
In the course of this moral and ideological pro-
cess, children’s sexual privacy has been excessively
invaded by these modern moralists.
Lastly, pedophiles may bask in the reflective glory of
“great peers” and by so doing justify their criminal acts
(Durkin and Bryant 1999).
Interesting how in ancient Greece Man/Boy love was
not only considered normal but was seen as a beauti-
ful thing. If anything age of consent laws show that
modern western so-call“civilized” society is actually
more regressive on sexuality while ancient cultures
were more progressive.
Recent studies find that members of online communi-
ties alleviate their negative self-image (O’Halloran and
Quayle 2010) by referring to themselves as “child lov-
ers.” Correspondingly, it is maintained that there are only
“consensual romantic relationships” between adults and
children (Paquette and Cortoni 2020).
I think the only way boylovers can fight back is to
have a BL writer and Hollywood producer make a
movie like Call Me By Your Name to make a really
heart-felt movie about an adult and young boy that
would speak to the general public and show it in a
good light and change the way people think about
man/boy love.
To conclude, law enforcement officers can expect the
offenders to rationalize CSA with cognitive distortions and
minimize their crimes with neutralizing accounts. It is useful
to keep in mind that the above-described cognitive distor-
tions explain why some individuals end up abusing children
and neutralizing accounts concentrate on their justifications
for offending. Moreover, these concepts are helpful to under-
stand why certain kinds of arguments surface in the online
discussions of CSA offenders.
Online Community ofCSAM Users
History ofCSAM Offenders
In the 1980s, Belanger etal. (1984) introduced the idea of
syndicated child exploitation rings. Surprisingly or not, in
addition to their main purpose of CSA, such rings corre-
spond to an extend with how child sexual abusers are organ-
ized in the darknet today. Similar to the Tor Browser’s logic
of circuits (torproject.org 2022), the rings laundered both
CSAM and payments for it from country to country and
continent to continent to minimize the possibility of being
caught by the law enforcement (Belanger etal. 1984). More-
over, the collectors had a strong need to socialize with their
peers, for social bonding and for expressing their attraction
to children. Lastly, they had clear mechanisms and rules for
including and excluding members of the network based on,
for example, the number of shared pictures (Belanger etal.
1984).
Members ofCSAM Offenders’ Online Communities
Empirical research on the members of CSAM online com-
munities is scarce. Much of it bases on O’Connell’s catego-
rization of different roles within online groups into (i) coor-
dinators of the activities, (ii) reviewers of pedophilia-related
outlets, (iii) generators of postings, (iv) enthusiasts of CSA,
and (v) posters and traders of CSAM. Moreover, passive
users and active opponents generate large groups (O’Connell
2000, 2001; see also Krone 2004), whereby opponents may
rather fuel than hinder the activities of the groups, as facing
a common enemy nurtures cohesion (O’Connell 2001).
Users of darknet forums share one distinctive characteris-
tic, namely distrustfulness. While these forums operate with
similar logic to mainstream online social networks—users
maintain profiles, communicate with each other, and share
contents—their underlying aim is often to support criminal
activities (van der Bruggen and Blokland 2021b; Macdon-
ald and Frank 2017; Motoyama etal. 2011). Communities

Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology
1 3
of child abusers have similar proceedings of establishing
trust between the users: after joining a group, new mem-
bers must complete assignments to become “newbies” of
the group. They then proceed into established users and
further (Gannon etal. 2023; Motoyama etal. 2011). Inte-
gration presupposes the adaptation of virtual rules for the
purpose of protecting the members and their criminal activi-
ties (O’Halloran and Quayle 2010). The rules are articulated
by coordinators of the groups, who also advise newcom-
ers. These actors “play a central role in the deviant process,
although it may not always be clear whether they are com-
mitting an offence” (O’Connell 2001).
The status of the users is the result of their activities: the
more (rare) material one shares and the more he communi-
cates with others, the higher is his standing (van der Bruggen
and Blokland 2020). Since collecting is characteristic for the
online culture of CSAM users, they may withhold parts of
their collections, or be attempted to produce new material,
to enhance their standing within the community (Carr 2007;
Merdian, etal., 2013).
Subculture asaSafe Place forCSA Offenders
Instead of a community, Jenkins prefers to call the online
society of CSA offenders a subculture, because its deviant
members share a vast amount of special knowledge and dif-
ferentiate themselves from the mainstream through a shared
interest: CSA (Jenkins 2001). He argues that in addition
to shared values and language, hierarchies and especially
“respect” paid for high-ranked users are characteristic for
subcultures (Jenkins 2001; see also Prichard etal. 2011; Holt
etal. 2010). CSA offenders find a mental escape from real-
life marginalization in their subculture.
As a group, we are the most despised group in the
world. We know what hate does and how it effects us,
yet there are those here that would do the same to other
members of this community. The boylove community
knows no race, religion, national origin, or gender.
The subculture feeds the individual with never-ending
amount of information and media, which stimulates sociali-
zation (O’Halloran and Quayle 2010). Moreover, Holt etal.
(2010) argue that a normative order, consisting of rules,
norms, and practices for behavior, aids members of the sub-
culture to justify and realize emotional and sexual relation-
ships with children.
Marginalization from the mainstream and the following
urge to defend deviance fuel the subculture in many ways.
For instance, condemnation of CSA by the society aids to
justify normative perimeters of the subculture, such as CSA
being in fact in the interest of children or the need of making
a distinction between “child lovers” and “child molesters”
(Durkin and Bryant 1999; O’Halloran and Quayle 2010).
They were saying all pedos are monsters and should
be killed. Is that true? It can’t be. I’m not hurting any-
one. I just want to see kids happy. It’s not my fault I
find kids sexually attracted. It just happened. There
are two groups of pedos. One who hurt people, and
one who don’t.
Moreover, online forums provide a safe place to discuss
sexual interests, such as the interest in children of spe-
cific ages or the sharing of experiences of physical sexual
violence against children (van der Bruggen and Blokland
2021a).
For me it’s 9-13, which makes me 30% pedophile and
70% hebephile. Do I care? Not really. I just use one
word: Boylover. Fuck the rest ;) Don’t fall into these
terms. It can’t be logical, putting something as com-
plex as loving a boy into a simple term of some kind
of -philia, it’s just way more than that.
Lastly, the members of a subculture share a worry about
their online and offline security as well as legal actions
against them, and, accordingly, they advise each other on
how to enhance anonymity and how to approach children in
real life (Holt etal. 2010).
I don’t talk to cops. They can enjoy silent me while
they take whatever the warrant calls for. Good luck,
it’s all encrypted.
Communities asPlaces toLearn Crimes
Social learning theory has been used for decades to under-
stand how criminal behavior emerges (Akers etal. 1979).
The underlying assumption is that social behavior develops
from direct conditioning (positive or negative consequences
of a certain conduct) and imitation of others’ behavior (Ban-
dura 1989). Social learning elaborates how, in addition to
normative learning and “cultural” impacts, several learn-
ing processes (direct and indirect differential reinforce-
ment, imitations, and differential association) together with
non-cultural constraints (such as normative socialization to
the surrounding environment’s code of conduct) create and
maintain criminal behavior (Akers 1996).
According to Akers, the most influential reinforcers of
criminal behavior are peer networks, family, and other social
groups. Criminal behavior emerges in interaction with, and
from imitation of, a peer group, which favors, justifies, and
over time reinforces continuous deviance from social norms
(Akers 1996; Akers etal. 1979; Jensen and Akers 2007).
This process is called differential association. Such “non-
normative processes” can enable criminal behavior despite
the underlying values of the surrounding society (Jensen and
Akers 2007).

Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology
1 3
Virtual peers can play as much role in the learning pro-
cess as face-to-face peers (Miller and Morris 2016). CSA
forums function as reinforcers of differential association
theory by providing advice for committing crimes and serv-
ing as platforms to rationalize criminal behavior (D’Ovidio
etal. 2009). Hence, they create criminogenic environments
where one can learn criminal conduct anonymously (West-
lake etal. 2017).
Fortin etal. (2018) offer another angle to the learning
process by describing a path of socialization within CSA
forums. After exploring the opportunities of the forums, the
offender starts to establish social connections, if he wishes
to gain access to more deviant, specific, or exclusive mate-
rial (Westlake etal. 2017). Socialization succeeds through
adopting the community’s standards of behavior and through
communication, such as using different keywords and virtual
spaces. The offender engages more and more with the vir-
tual community, and his real-world presence decreases. In
some cases, the cyber space is not enough, and the offender
decides to seek physical contact with children (Fortin etal.
2018).
While socialization has been subjected to few studies
on online pedophile networks (van der Bruggen and Blok-
land 2020, 2021b), the social nature of the darknet has not
been considered systematically (Roberts & Hunt 2012). The
social disorganization theory has been used to highlight the
importance of the surrounding community’s organization
on (offline) crime rates. A disorganized society is unable
to hold onto its basic common rights and to maintain social
control. The result is an increased rate of criminal victimi-
zation (Bursik 1988). It is not farfetched to use the social
disorganization theory to explain how darknet enables CSA
offending. The anonymity frees one from social control, and
the absence of the surrounding society’s supervision offers
an opportunity to commit criminal activities (Monk etal.
2018).
Conclusions
This article sought to offer insight into the functioning logic
and dynamics of online CSAM communities and their con-
tribution to sexual violence against children. To do so, it
combined scholarly explanations for CSA offending with
justifications of CSA offenders for their behavior. The over-
all argument is that online CSA communities in the darknet
advance sexual violence against children in three ways.
First, the social hierarchy of CSA communities and the
desire of their members to proceed into their “inner circles”
increase the engagement with other offenders, as social
participation is the precondition for “promotions” within
many communities (van der Bruggen and Blokland 2020).
The system also feeds the production and use of CSAM,
because its sharing is another way to enhance one’s status
(Carr 2007; Merdian, etal., 2013). Because the functioning
logic of online CSA communities encourage both interaction
between perpetrators and sexual violence against children, it
is useful to chart potential offenders’ activities and status in
the forums during investigations, as this may shed light on
the extent and nature of offending.
Second, the communities offer a space to socialize with
child abusing peers, which often is impossible in the real
life due to the fear of being caught by the law enforcement.
As the citations from the online forums elaborate, contact
with other offenders easily creates a sense that CSA is in
fact far more common than it is (de Young 1988). It is,
moreover, important to emphasize that the above citations
from a CSA forum are not sporadic but reiterate frequently
across forums. Accordingly, when interviewing offenders, it
is helpful to keep in mind that they are likely to use specific
cognitive distortions (Howitt & Sheldon 2007) and neu-
tralizations (O’Halloran and Quayle 2010) to justify their
offending.
Third, darknet communities of child sexual abusers are
literally on the dark side of our social system, because
being under the radar of social control through anonymity
is the key for their existence (Monk etal. 2018). On the one
hand, individual perpetrators seek and find advice on how
to remain anonymous, but also on how to “safely” proceed
into physical sexual violence against children. On the other
hand, the nature of the cyber space also easily leads to the
impression that online CSA happens in a pseudo-reality
where actual victims do not exist (Bartels etal. 2019; Wil-
son and Jones 2008).
One of the most important questions at the societal level
is victim identification. It is central for the victims’ recovery
and should therefore be priority for investigations that deal
with CSAM offending. Although there are several initia-
tives that address CSAM offending,such as National Center
for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), INHOPE, and
Project Arachnid, a game changer would be to politically
impose “obligations on online service providers, such as
social media platforms, to prevent, detect and report sexual
violence against children on their platforms and to remove
footage of sexual violence against children” (Justice Initia-
tive 2023). The most realistic avenue to address this is within
the framework of the new proposed EU legislation to prevent
and combat online child sexual abuse.
In addition to social media platforms particularly problem-
atic targets for investigations are companies or individuals
that provide cloud-based peer-to-peer platforms enabling the
exchange of CSAM. These platforms do not monitor or record
activities, thus making the exchange of CSAM untraceable and
unsearchable. CSAM offenders escape prosecution, because on
the one hand they are often based in another country than the
servers they use and on the other hand the administrators of

Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology
1 3
these servers often refuse to respond to law enforcement agen-
cies’ search warrants. Many do not monitor their traffic or report
apparent CSAM to law enforcement or initiatives such as the
NCMEC, who work in cooperation with law enforcement.
For scholars, darknet offers a plethora of data to study
CSAM offending forums and deviances of CSA offenders.
For instance, investigators of CSA offences would benefit
of systematic scholarly research on the risk behavior of
offenders: what types of different offending pathways can
be identified, do specific interactions with other offenders
predict offending, and can we use this information to create
solutions that ease the daily work of law enforcement?
Funding This research has been funded by
1. End Violence as part of the ReDirection project led by Suojellaan
Lapsia, Protect Children ry. https:// prote ctc hi ldren. fi/ r edir ection/https://
www. end- viole nce. org.
2. European Union
Declarations
Ethical Approval This article does not contain any studies with human
participants or animals performed by any of the authors.
Conflict of Interest The author declares no conflict of interests.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attri-
bution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adapta-
tion, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source,
provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes
were made. The images or other third party material in this article are
included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated
otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in
the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not
permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will
need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a
copy of this licence, visit http:// creat iveco mmons. org/ licen ses/ by/4. 0/.
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