Political Foreword by Jess Phillips MP: IWF 2025 Report

Each IWF annual report is more sobering than the last. The volume of child sexual abuse and exploitation online is horrifying, and it continues to grow.
 
This report emphasises the scale of the catastrophic threat that is posed by offenders. In 2025, the IWF confirmed 311,610 reports as or linked to child sexual abuse material, this is a 7% increase in comparison to 2024. When we see these shocking numbers, we must not forget that each one represents a victim of the most vile instance of child sexual abuse which should never have happened.  

As ever, the IWF have remained agile in the face of fast-moving technology and the evolving online child sexual abuse threat. Their tools such as IntelliGrade and Image Intercept significantly accelerate the assessment of child sexual abuse imagery and ensure that a wide range of services can block images and videos on upload.

Although child sexual abuse and exploitation can affect any child, offenders intentionally target particular groups for specific types of harm, reflecting patterns of power, control and exploitation. Violence against women and girls and child sexual abuse material are inherently connected. 97% of AI-generated child sexual abuse images depicted girls and 77% of victims of child sexual abuse images reviewed by the IWF were girls.  
 
This Government is unequivocally committed to protecting all victims of abuse. This is why we created a new offence which criminalises the creation of, or request for the creation of, Non-Consensual Intimate imagery (NCII). This offence has been added to the Online Safety Act as a priority offence, meaning companies must take fast and effective action to prevent the offending form happening on their service and remove the content. However, we recognise that we must go further. We are also banning nudification tools. These enable the non-consensual digital “undressing” of people to create realistic sexual imagery and are increasingly used to produce indecent images of children, including by other children. These tools have no place in our society, and we must continue to go further to protect those who are most vulnerable in society.  
 
It is harrowing to read that older teenagers are being caught in cycles of abuse with ‘self-generated’ imagery. There was a 127% increase in sextortion cases from the previous year, with 97% of the victims being boys aged between 12-17. Report Remove plays an essential role, allowing young people to report nude imagery which has been shared non-consensually. The rise in reports demonstrates how valuable this service is, but it also underlines the critical need to prevent such imagery from being created in the first place.  

At such a pivotal and emotional stage of their lives, children are being manipulated and extorted by offenders, often with no support. That is why this Government committed in the VAWG strategy to make it impossible for children in the UK to take, share or view nude images. This is an essential intervention that can break the cycle of abuse before it starts – by preventing the creation and circulation of explicit imagery in the first place.   

Every stark annual report from IWF provides an essential reminder of the scale and severity of child sexual abuse and of the need to remain relentlessly focused on protecting children from the horrors of child sexual abuse. That is why this government is prepared to use every lever to safeguard children both online and offline.  

Behind this vital work are individual members of devoted IWF staff, who deserve our unreserved recognition and gratitude for their consistent efforts to tackle this horrific material. I would like to thank them for such tireless efforts to protect children.