A message from the CEO
As I reflect on the past year, I am proud to share what has been a period of deepened global impact, sharpened strategic focus and growing momentum for meaningful change.
At Childlight, our purpose remains clear and unwavering: to safeguard children around the world from sexual exploitation and abuse. The scale of the challenge remains vast, but so too does the opportunity for progress.
Over the past 12 months, we have moved decisively from building foundations to delivering measurable impact. Through robust data, trusted partnerships and targeted outreach, we are shifting the global narrative to reframe child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA), not just as a crime to react to, but as a preventable global public health emergency.
This report captures the journey we’ve been on: exposing systemic enablers of harm, equipping practitioners with evidence they can act on and working across borders to catalyse prevention.
We are also reclaiming the narrative around child safety in the digital world. For too long, powerful interests have presented privacy and child protection as mutually exclusive. At Childlight, we believe they can, and must, co-exist. We are building an evidence-led, values-driven alternative to the status quo.
As we grow, we’re committed to making our work even more accessible. Our new website, launched this year, makes our research easier to find, easier to use and available in multiple languages — because evidence must be shared to have impact.
I remain deeply grateful to our funders, partners, advisors, frontline collaborators and the Childlight team.
Your shared commitment is the engine of our progress.
Together, we are shining a light — and keeping it shining — where it matters most.
Paul Stanfield
Chief Executive Officer
Childlight - Global Child Safety Institute
Our highlights (2025)
Shining a light on harm — and those who enable it
In April, we released Searchlight 2025, our bi-annual investigation into the nature of child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA). This year’s edition asked: Who benefits from CSEA? Through eight original studies, we exposed the financial networks that fuel this crisis and how systems, industries and even governments enable or profit from abuse.
Prior to Searchlight 2025, we released our first edition of the Into the Light global index which revealed that over 300 million children are affected by technology-facilitated CSEA every year. If those figures were not devastating enough, Searchlight drove home another dark truth: in some places, livestreamed child abuse can be accessed for less than the cost of a soft drink.
Together, these two landmark reports don’t just show the scale of this crisis. They map opportunity — opportunity to disrupt, prevent and protect.
Turning evidence into impact
Childlight's data and insight helped drive global action by:
- Co-leading the global revision of the Terminology Guidelines for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, establishing greater consistency in how CSEA is defined and understood globally
- Partnering with organisations such as Child Rescue Coalition to help unlock and analyse previously inaccessible data
- Delivering targeted in-country technical support through our Childlight Technical Advisory Programme (C-TAP), providing experts to support governments to improve the response to CSEA through better analysis and use of CSEA data — with impactful pilots in Pakistan, Ghana and Madagascar
- Launching an East Asia & Pacific Hub, hosted by the University of New South Wales and led by Professor Michael Salter, building capacity in a region of high risk and low infrastructure
Thanks to continued support from Human Dignity Foundation, we expanded our team, strengthened research integrity systems and advanced new prevalence estimates for Western Europe and South Asia in the second edition of our Into the Light global index — due for release in Europe (European Parliament; Council of Europe conference, Moldova; ISPCAN 2025, Lithuania) and India (c0c0n conference) in Autumn 2025.
Influencing systems and agendas
Over the past year, Childlight’s research and leadership helped shape global policy and practice by:
- Informing global and regional policy through the World Health Organization (WHO), UN bodies, the US Senate, the Council of Europe and the Financial Action Task Force
- Reaching a global audience of over 3.5 billion for Searchlight 2025 through media coverage and briefings in 20+ countries
- Featuring at the first Global Ministerial Summit on Ending Violence Against Children, held in Bogotá
- Supporting the growing success of our Global Data Fellows programme, which is cultivating a new generation of CSEA data leaders and contributing to initiatives such as a focused CSEA track at India’s upcoming global conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cybercrime
A turning point in Atlanta
In June 2025, Childlight co-hosted a landmark Global Symposium in Atlanta with Emory University and the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC). The event brought together leaders from public health, policing, technology and civil society.
At the end of the conference, a joint declaration was signed by experts from WHO, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Emory University, Georgia State University, the European Parliament and others — calling for CSEA to be recognised as a global public health emergency. This was a direct result of Childlight’s data and advocacy.
Strengthening how we communicate
We also made important strides in how we share our work. Our new website, launched in early 2025, reflects our commitment to accessibility, inclusion and global reach. It makes our research freely available, easier to find and accessible in multiple languages — ensuring that data is understood and usable by the people who need it most.
Because data only drives change when it is accessible, trusted and acted upon.
You can learn more about Childlight in our annual report.
"Childlight’s global data and analysis are helping bring vital visibility to child sexual abuse as a preventable public health issue — a goal we fully share — and we are proud to work alongside them to advance."
Sabine Rakotomalala, Department for Social Determinants of Health, World Health Organization
Looking ahead
We have come a long way in just one year, but much more needs to be done to address this global pandemic. Looking ahead, Childlight will scale its CSEA prevalence data to all regions of the world by 2028:
- 2025: Western Europe and South Asia
- 2026: Latin America and the Caribbean, North America, East Asia and the Pacific
- 2027: Sub-Saharan Africa
- 2028: Middle East and North Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia
Each regional release will include actionable insights, policy briefings and recommendations.
To strengthen the public health framing of CSEA, we are also recruiting public health experts to work alongside our CSEA and data science teams, further bridging prevention science and protection practice.
A call to collaborate:
Ending CSEA will take more than evidence — it will take all of us.
Whether you bring data, funding, lived experience, technical expertise or political will, we invite you to join us in this mission. Contact us if you think there is a way we can collaborate.
Because children can’t wait — and neither should we.
"Childlight’s research has made the hidden scale of child sexual abuse and exploitation impossible to ignore — equipping advocates like me with the evidence we need to push for real change. I’m grateful for their partnership and for being welcomed as a true collaborator in their work."
Bryanna Mariñas. Founder, Global Youth-Led Movement on Ending Violence Against Children
