Childlight

April 2025 / Reading Time: 6 minutes

Words Matter: The value of a “dictionary” for safeguarding around child sexual exploitation and abuse.

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In 2023 a core group of organisations, Safe Online, ECPAT International, We Protect Global Alliance and Childlight, sought to review and revise the Terminology Guidelines for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse. Part of this analysis involved a scoping review of the academic and grey literature use of the terminology guidelines since their publication in 2016. This analysis found that, while many of the terminology recommendations found in the guidelines were evidenced in the literature, there was little specific referencing to the guidelines overall. The scoping review also found that there was little agreement on what to call the overall study of this type of harm to children. This was an important finding as the guidelines were initially developed to avoid multiple terms being used across the various sectors. The fact that there were many umbrella terms being used could lead to potential confusion and limit the impact of safeguarding efforts. This highlighted the importance of the terminology guidelines to the field of child protection and safeguarding. The need for revision was strongly influenced by the ever-changing nature of technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse. There was confusion around many of the harms posed to children in technology-connected spaces and emerging terminology that had not previously been captured. The efforts around the revision of the terminology guidelines show the value of interagency collaboration and how a coordinated group effort can result in a revised publication that has been supported by 40 global organisations.   

Research findings  

The scoping review used the PRISMA –ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Review) method. It located 31 sources for full-text review which had been published over a seven-year period (2017-2023) and met the requirements of including terminology definitions pertaining to child sexual exploitation and abuse (Tricco, et al., 2018). Of these 31 sources, 18 were social science academic papers, six were legislative documents that included specific definitions and, finally, seven related to international policy documents.  

An initial review of the 31 sources found that only two of them specifically referenced the terminology guidelines. Of those two sources that did reference the guidelines, neither was a social science research paper, and one was a document produced by the Broadband Commission, a global entity from outside the child protection sector. This was a significant finding as it meant that one of the main purposes of the terminology guidelines had not been achieved. This provided further evidence for the purposed revision work that was planned by the core working group.  

A further finding concerned the many umbrella terms used within the various documents. Six phrases were found to be used across the documents to refer to the overall study of child sexual exploitation and child sexual abuse. These varied in the presence of the term “online” as well as their focus on either sexual exploitation or sexual abuse. The difficulty results from the distinctions which are needed between “online” and in-person harms, as well as the type of harms classified as either sexual exploitation or sexual abuse. There was strong evidence for a term that could capture all of the harms as well as the different and often multiple environments in which they occur.  

Additionally, the review of the documents showed a consistent presence and use of certain terms.  “Child” or “children” and accompanying definition, was a term identified in the previous terminology guidelines which could be used without much further consideration and was found in all but one of the included documents. “Grooming”, a specific form of solicitation, was also found in a number of documents; though its use varied and at times became a replacement term used for all types of solicitation. The use of “child sexual abuse” was also present in nearly all (29 of 31) documents found in this review –much more than any other sexual harm to children, i.e. “sexual exploitation” and “sexual violence”. The study also uncovered that many terms had grown in their use, or emerged, since the publication of the terminology guidelines in 2016.  

Overall, the scoping review identified that further work was required to keep the guidelines relevant as well as encouraging future use. This prompted the design of interagency working group for the updating and revision of the terminology guidelines. Separate sub-working groups were organised around three themes which emerged within the initial guidelines’ publication. The first theme centred around terminology that could potentially have an element of victim-blaming within the language. The next thematic area was around perpetration language, both concerning types of perpetrated harms but also the terminology used to refer to varying degrees of harm to children. The last, which was most supported by the results of the review, concerned terminology for technology-related harms. This was the area that required greater clarity concerning the scope, as well as a more conscious attempt at futureproofing due to ongoing advancements in technology.  

During the course of the interagency sub-working groups, a survey was designed to help inform the group work of the current use of terminology found in the guidelines, as well as new terms being used which were not found within the 2016 publication. This process further supported the findings of the study, which found that just over half of the respondents had heard of the terminology guidelines. It also found that very few used “technology-facilitated”, showing a preference to use “online” instead.  

As a result of all the review work and the input obtained from the interagency sub-working groups, the core working group was able to provide valuable input to the original authors for the development of a revised guidelines document. This document aimed at taking a stronger stance on harmful terminology while including and highlighting the terminology that has emerged since the publication of the original. The hope is that, upon release, there will be a greater adherence to the recommendations, which will help to avoid confusion between safeguarding organisations, allow for comparable metrics globally and avoid causing further harm to victims and survivors through the use of inappropriate terminology.  

Conclusions and Recommendations: 

Already underway/completed 

  1. It was clear from the review that the terminology guidelines needed to be updated. As such, this prompted the core working group to come up with a plan for said update. This resulted in the recently-published revised terminology guidelines of 2025.
  2. The specific referencing of the terminology guidelines also appeared to require a more targeted and wider launch to raise awareness. As such the interagency working group has made it a priority to submit articles and abstracts for presentations to various audiences, including law enforcement, academics, politicians and government officials.  

Next steps  

  1. Continue to highlight the most harmful terminology, such as “child pornography” and “child prostitution” as its persistent use as seen in both academic literature as well as news media.
  2. Translation and/or adaptation of the revised guidelines into the nine languages that the original guidelines were provided is an important next step to increase the scope and impact of this work.
  3. Further study into youth-led language and terminology is needed to help inform policy and procedures around the appropriate terms which children understand and use.  

Limitations: 

This study was limited in its findings due to the chosen period of 2017-2023, which missed out on publications which may have referenced the terminology guidelines immediately after their release or that were published during the period the core working group was developing a revision plan. Another limitation was focusing on articles and research which had a terminology-only focus. This meant that articles which may have included a single specific terminology reference from the guidelines would have been missed as the overall research did not have a terminology focus. The final limitation was the inclusion of publications in English only. The terminology guidelines have been made available in nine different languages since their release in 2016 and are hoped to be used more widely than English language-only audiences. Future studies should investigate the referencing and adherence to the guidelines in publications not in English.  

More information 

Suggested Citation: Stevenson, J., Nimbley, E.,  Lu, M. and Fry, D.  Words Matter: The value of a “dictionary” for safeguarding around child sexual exploitation and abuse.  Childlight – Global Child Safety Institute: Edinburgh, 2025. 

Researchers: Mr James Stevenson, Dr Emy Nimbley, Dr Mengyao Lu, Prof Deborah Fry 

Study partners: ECPAT International, WeProtect Global Alliance and Safe Online 

The revision of the first edition of the terminology guidelines has been possible thanks to the financial support of the Oak Foundation through ECPAT International. 

References: 

Tricco, A. C., Lillie, E., Zarin, W., O'Brien, K. K., Colquhoun, H., Levac, D., Moher, D., Peters, M. D. J., Horsley, T., Weeks, L., Hempel, S., Akl, E. A., Chang, C., McGowan, J., Stewart, L., Hartling, L., Aldcroft, A., Wilson, M. G., Garritty, C., Lewin, S., … Straus, S. E. (2018). PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR): Checklist and Explanation. Annals of internal medicine, 169(7), 467–473. https://doi.org/10.7326/M18-0850  

Words Matter Technical Notes
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