Twice a year Europol hosts a Victim Identification Taskforce analysing data on cases of child sexual exploitation from Europol’s Image-Video Analysis System.
31 specialists from international crime fighting bodies, namely Europol, INTERPOL and 31 countries met in the Hague to identify personal victims and the perpetrators of child (sexual) abuse, which could be crossing multiple country’s borders and enabled by fraudulent ID documents.
As a result, 12 children were tentatively identified and 204 leads referred to national authorities pending further enquiries. Hundreds of datasets were forensically examined, from victims ranging from toddlers to teenagers and spanning both genders and national backgrounds.
The specialist technology that Europol used prioritised datasets for victim identification and since its deployment in 2016, processed over 118 million unique files containing multi-media material of child (sexual) abuse. The operation of VIDTF from 2014 to 2026 shows that competent authorities have delivered extensive reliable investigations over this time which generated 3,484 leads and safeguarded over a thousand further victims.
Equally on Europol’s radar are criminals generating AI sexual abuse material and this has led to 19 countries, including the UK, to crackdown on the punishment and consequences to creating artificially generated images with criminal intent.
Speaking on this separate police operation, one Europol representative said: “This contributes to the growing prevalence of child sexual abuse material, and as the volume increases, it becomes progressively more challenging for investigators to identify offenders or victims”.
To enforce the law, technologies for detection and investigative methods need to be advanced over the fraudster to address “emerging challenges”.
The task forces utilise the IVAS system, overseen by specialists that can put forward information to Europol for cross-checking against its databases. This may lead to the identification of victims and where the material has been produced.
Images and video material can be created with artificial intelligence to hyper realistic standards because the AI models are trained on real victim abuse, adding to the further challenge of authorities combating these threats.
