Online child sexual exploitation rate up 347% in Canada since 2014

Scared sad girl with a laptop suffering from online harassment feeling desperate and intimidated. Officials say children are more likely to be exploited when using the internet unsupervised. (File photo/SB Arts Media/GettyImages)

Warning: Graphic content.

A new report from Statistics Canada found that despite a 16 per cent year-over-year decrease, the rate of online child sexual exploitation has increased by 347 per cent in Canada since 2014.

The report, based on data from 2023-24, found that police services from across the country reported a total of 16,905 incidents of online child sexual exploitation (OCSE) in a single year.

The StatCan report released Tuesday also found that the number of reported online sexual offences against children increased by 182 per cent in a 10-year timespan.

What is considered online child sexual exploitation?

The term OSCE includes a “wide range” of Criminal Code offences that are grouped into two categories, StatCan said, providing the following definitions:

• Online sexual offences against children – Examples include luring, inviting to sexual touching and non-consensual distribution of intimate images involving victims aged 17 years and younger; and
• Online child sexual abuse and exploitation material offences – Formerly known as child pornography offences.

Police-reported incidents in 2023-24

According to the report, the rate of online sexual offences against children continued to rise in 2024, as police-reported incidents of the offences rose by 43 per cent in a year, mainly due to a “sharp” increase in the number of “luring incidents.”

“Consistent with previous years, luring — the offence of communicating with a child or youth online for the purpose of committing a sexual offence — accounted for almost three-quarters (74 per cent) of all police-reported online sexual offences against children in 2024,” the StatCan report said.

The report called it the “highest rate on record since comparable data became available in 2014.”

Majority of OSCE victims were girls

The rate of police-reported online sexual exploitation was the highest for girl victims, the report found. Out of the 1,649 children and youth victims of the offences in 2024, three-quarters or 78 per cent were girls.

The report also found that the rate of reported online sexual offences against children was almost four times higher for girls than boys.

However, the report added that there was a drop in the number of online child sexual abuse and exploitation material incidents reported to police in 2024 from the previous year by 26 per cent, driving the overall rate of incidents to fall. This was partially due to more cases – current and historical – being brought forward to the authorities by specialized provincial or federal internet child exploitation police units.

Methodology

The report is based on a Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR) that collects data from criminal incidents that were reported to the Canadian authorities and examines the incidents, focusing on the characteristics of the OSCE incidents, victims and accused persons.

The variations in the rates of incidents between years may be due to differences in recognition, reporting and investigation of the incidents, rather than changes in occurrence.