Nominet funds major new project to prevent online child sexual abuse

Nominet, the public benefit internet company, responsible for operating the .UK domain has funded The Lucy Faithfull Foundation to develop and deliver a programme that aims to stop people from viewing sexual images and videos of children online.

The Lucy Faithfull Foundation will receive £930,000 over the course of three years to use behavioural science, partnerships, and innovation to rollout effective online warnings across the internet to prevent this illegal behaviour.

This initiative seeks to tackle the huge and growing crime of online child sexual abuse by disrupting and deterring people from offending and instead driving them towards confidential help to change their behaviour.

Figures from the National Police Chiefs' Council suggest that the police are now dealing with more than 900 people per month who are alleged to have committed an online child sexual abuse offence. Furthermore in 2022, the Internet Watch Foundation reported that it found 255,588 online links containing child sexual abuse imagery, having links to the imagery, or advertising it, up 1% on 2021.

The Lucy Faithfull Foundation has already pioneered the use of warning messages presented to people who are searching for sexual images of children online. These warnings clearly state that such behaviour is illegal, causes harm to children, and has huge consequences for the viewer and their own loved ones. The warnings also point towards The Lucy Faithfull Foundation's Stop It Now helpline for support to stop. These warning messages direct an average of 15,000 people in the UK per year to Stop It Now, and even more globally.

The funding from Nominet provides an opportunity to further build on this experience and momentum to design impactful approaches to deterring potential perpetrators of abuse. With the grant and Nominet's support as a tech-focused funder, The Lucy Faithfull Foundation can innovate, experiment, and build digital-era capabilities.

Successfully preventing would-be offenders from viewing sexual images of children online requires effective collaboration between the public, private and non-profit organisations. The Lucy Faithfull programme will work in partnership with technology companies, researchers and law enforcement agencies to further test and improve the effectiveness of the warning messages, and to implement them in more online spaces.

To ensure the project reaches its goals, The Lucy Faithfull Foundation has convened a multi-disciplinary advisory consortium with communication, clinical, research and technical expertise to support its team, and new roles funded by the programme.

The consortium will include the Policing Institute for the Eastern Region (PIER), University of Tasmania (UTAS), Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), and law enforcement. Those involved will ensure that the project has up to date insights into the offending threat and how warning messages can best counter this and be rolled out.

Deborah Denis, CEO of The Lucy Faithfull Foundation, said:

"The scale of online offending means that society needs to continually evolve the tools and techniques it uses to prevent harm to children. And that's exactly what this project will help us to do. We want to achieve the change for child protection that's been needed for a long time. It has been too easy to offend online for too long and all opportunities for intervention need to be taken

"This project will be a game-changer. It will make the internet a hostile place that confronts people who are offending or at risk of doing so with the reality of what they are doing. Through a process of systemic innovation, we will be able to roll out gold standard warnings across the internet, so that this approach becomes the norm rather than the exception. We will divert people from their course of action, rather than allowing them to progress on their pathway unimpeded."

Paul Fletcher, CEO of Nominet, commented

"We've got a great deal of experience in granting funds to initiatives that equip children with the skills they need to stay safe online, but we're stepping into a new area to fund this innovative programme, which is focused on deterring offenders. The Internet should be a safe place for all, and that's why we're proud to be supporting The Lucy Faithfull Foundation's pioneering work in this space."

Notes to editors

What will the project do?

1. Experimentation

• Develop an evidence-based methodology for testing various warnings in different online spaces
• Run a series of experimentation cycles to design, test, collect and analyse data and iterate warnings

• Gather insights as to which warnings are most effective in different online spaces

1. Innovation

• Mapping of risky online spaces, offender pathways and identification of points to engage internet users
• Development of new approaches in online spaces that do not currently deploy warnings
• Run a series of experimentation cycles to design, test, collect and analyse data and iterate new approaches and then implement them

1. Scaling

• Build partnerships across the technology industry so that more warnings and other approaches can be deployed in more online spaces
• Design a blueprint for the technology industry for the use of warnings in tackling online child sexual abuse
• Champion the use of warnings so that there is widespread acceptance that it is best practice

Supporting quotes

Susie Hargreaves OBE, CEO of the Internet Watch Foundation:

"Every year, IWF staff view and remove hundreds of thousands of images of children being sexually abused from the internet. We know through this work that the demand for these images is very high and continues to grow year-on-year. This project promises to reduce demand through innovative partnership working, diverting people who are offending or at risk of doing so.

"As part of the consortium board, the IWF is delighted to have the opportunity help support, advise and contribute to the ongoing success of this project. Providing our knowledge and expertise gained through more than 25 years of combatting online child sexual abuse, this is a huge opportunity to support our mission to remove this material for good. And it is only by working together to tackle demand that we can truly hope to prevent the production and dissemination of sexual images of children, helping to keep children safe from harm and creating a better, safer internet for everyone."

Gabrielle Shaw, CEO of The National Association for People Abused in Childhood:

"This is a fantastic opportunity that will help further develop and scale-up The Lucy Faithfull Foundation's approach to use warnings to prevent online child sexual abuse. From our work with survivors we know that there is support for interventions to stop harm before it happens in the first place, thereby keeping children safe.

"This new funding and the expansion of this work will help push forward and normalise this type of pioneering approach, safeguarding thousands of children annually, stopping people at risk of offending before they can become perpetrators."

Simon Bailey CBE, Chair of PIER:

"In the UK we tried to arrest our way out of the online CSA problem and after several years of pursuing this approach it became abundantly clear that a whole system solution was going to be the only way to tackle the threat and protect children.

"Part of that system approach must be focused on deterring offenders before they abuse, and this project will be a progressive step in that direction. Investment in this area is long overdue and I wholeheartedly support this work."

About Nominet  

Nominet is a public benefit company, driven by a commitment to use technology to improve connectivity, securityand inclusivity online. Since 1996, Nominet has run the .UK internet infrastructure, developing an expertisein the Domain Name System (DNS) that now underpins sophisticated threat monitoring, detection, prevention, and analytics that is used by governments to mitigate cyber threats. Our social impact programme providesfunding, supportand opportunities to help tackle some of the most important digital issues facing young people in the UK today.

About The Lucy Faithfull Foundation

The Lucy Faithfull Foundation is the only UK-wide child protection charity dedicated solely to preventing child sexual abuse. It works with entire families affected by or concerned about abuse including: adult male and female sexual abusers; young people with inappropriate sexual behaviours; victims of abuse and other family members; front-line workers and professionals.

It also runs the Stop It Now! UK and Ireland confidential helpline (0808 1000 900) and campaign. Since it opened in 2002 the helpline aims to prevent child abuse by encouraging people who are offending or at risk of doing so to seek help, and by giving adults the information they need to protect children safely. It is run by an experienced team of trained advisors - including former probation officers, social workers, psychologists and ex-police officers.

lucyfaithfull.org.uk

stopitnow.org.uk

Contact for Nominet

Samantha Curtis, Communications Lead, Media Relations

[email protected]

Contact for The Lucy Faithfull Foundation

Joseph Costello, Press and Communications Manager
07512 334 961
[email protected]

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