Published: Fri 20 Mar 2026
A “nameless” British schoolgirl whose extreme sexual abuse was recorded and spread across the internet for years is now getting support after a UK analyst identified her thanks to images of her school uniform.
The victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has finally been contacted by police years after images of her being sexually abused as a child began being distributed online.
The abuse happened when the victim was between 11 and 13 years old and included some of the most extreme (Category A) kinds of sexual abuse. There is no suggestion any of this abuse happened at the school.
Analysts at the UK’s Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) often discovered imagery of her being distributed in the darkest corners of the internet.
As well as this, her imagery was also included in the Government’s CAID (Child Abuse Image Database), a secure archive of child sexual abuse imagery acquired by UK police and the National Crime Agency (NCA).
The IWF is the only non-law enforcement body in the world with access to CAID, and has a dedicated taskforce team which painstakingly grades, assesses, and assigns digital fingerprints (or hashes) to imagery to prevent it being further distributed online.
The services and datasets that IWF offers provides to online platforms and tech companies is the only route for ensuring police-seized sexual abuse imagery in CAID can be prevented from being re-uploaded online.
This difficult but important work is vital to making sure victims and survivors do not continue to be revictimised by the repeated sharing of their sexual abuse and can begin to recover from the abuse they suffered free of the spectre of knowing the images and videos may still be out there.
In January, however, an eagle-eyed analyst at the IWF made a major breakthrough when she discovered images of the victim in her school uniform.
This key piece of information helped her quickly narrow down the search, giving her enough information to tip off police who acted to make sure the victim got help and support.
Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, Jess Phillips, said: “The sexual abuse of children online is one of the most disturbing crimes of our time. The scale of offending and grooming is nothing short of deeply shocking and has a lasting impact on survivors.
“The work of the Internet Watch Foundation in analysing images is crucial so that victims can be identified and receive help and support.
“Predators cannot continue like this. That’s why we have already announced a ban on so‑called ‘nudification’ apps to stop abusive images being created and spread in the first place.
“We will not hesitate to go further until our children are safe from sexual abuse online.”
The IWF works to disrupt the spread of child sexual abuse imagery globally. Its dedicated expert analysts have unique legal power to proactively hunt down this material and work to have it blocked and removed from the internet.
Every day, its analysts see unidentified child victims. While they work hard to make sure the imagery cannot spread online, they do not always have enough information to identify the children being abused.
Here is how one analyst, through diligence, determination, and a bit of luck, helped give a name to a previously unknown victim of child sexual abuse – getting her the recognition and support she is entitled to, and giving her the peace of mind that the IWF is working to remove images and videos of her sexual abuse.
IWF analyst Mabel (not her real name) has worked at the IWF as an internet content analyst for five years. Every day, she views images and videos of children suffering some of the worst forms of sexual abuse – which she assesses and grades according to UK law.
She does this so the imagery can be taken down and blocked from being shared online again – a vital piece of support for victims who would otherwise live under the shadow of that imagery circulating online.
The whole time Mabel has been at the IWF, she has repeatedly seen criminals sharing imagery of one particular child. A girl from the UK aged, Mabel estimates, somewhere between 11 and 13 years old.
A lot of this imagery is what is often called ‘self-generated’. The girl had been tricked, extorted, or otherwise coerced into sexual abuse which ranged in severity from Category C sexual abuse right through to Category A – the most extreme kinds of sexual abuse under UK law.
Mabel said: “As long as I have worked here, I have seen sets of images of this victim. We action lots of forums where nasty people share images backwards and forwards. We action them and then get the forum taken down, we get the images taken down and hashed.”
She added: “Eventually you remember who you are looking at because you see some faces over and over. This particular girl – she just stuck in my head. I’ve actioned her imagery many times over the years.
“Then, out of the blue, I had a public report – not related to this young girl. It was a link to a cyberlocker – a kind of cloud storage space. I went into the locker to have a look what was in there.
“There were lots of folders of images – some stuff that was actionable (criminal). And then one of the folders I clicked on – instantly when I opened it – I thought I recognise that person. Instantly. Her face came to me.”
Mabel dug deeper into the files and noted the file appeared to have been labelled with the victim’s name.
“That was the first clue,” said Mabel. “I now know her name.
“I started clicking on all the images. And in this folder, they were all photographs of her in a school uniform, in a school gym, in the canteen, in her gym uniform, in her blazer.
“As soon as I clicked on the one with her in her blazer, I could see the school logo, so I just blew up the school logo and did an image search. It took me five minutes max to find the school.
“Then, because I had so many images of various parts of the school, I went on the school website and matched the scenes so I could definitely say it was the same place.”
The situation was then escalated with more members of the IWF’s hotline team being drafted in to help confirm Mabel’s findings and begin the process of understanding whether the victim was known to police or had ever been safeguarded.
The team found that, while the victim had been seen before and appeared in CAID, the Government’s Child Abuse Image Database, no one had ever been able to identify her until now.
“She was just there as a nameless victim,” Mabel said.
The team then began a formal police referral – a lengthy document that painstakingly lays out the IWF’s findings – to CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection command), the specialist branch of the National Crime Agency which helps protect children and young people from online grooming and sexual abuse.
Within two weeks, Mabel said, the police confirmed they had been able to contact the victim and begin the process of getting her the support which she had never been offered before.
“She is now a young adult,” said Mabel. “She has never had support. She has now been offered support with all the relevant organisations. She has been informed that we continue to take action against all the imagery we find, which she was very relieved about.”
Mabel said the IWF sees “thousands” of young victims of sexual abuse like this who are yet to be identified.
“We see them every day,” she said. “Every forum we action, there will be thousands of victims you see over and over again that have still not been identified.
“Just finding that one, and being able to identify that one is the highlight of my job. You know you’re disrupting the bad guys, but knowing a child, a victim, has been found and supported, you’re on a high for the year.”
Chris Hughes, Hotline Director at the IWF, praised the dedication of his team and noted how their work has such an impact for victims and survivors.
He said: “For years, that survivor has lived with the knowledge of what went on. She could have been left wondering whether those images were still out there, and who may be passing them around – who out there may have seen her at her most vulnerable.
“Given that she could have been as young as 11 when these images were produced, and she is now a young adult, it is appalling that images of her could remain in circulation for years after the original crime took place. The IWF takes the imagery down, and creates tools which can prevent them being uploaded again. It’s time more platforms took proactive steps to prevent the spread of this content, and to improve moderation.
“The imagery was known to police too – and was on the Government’s secure CAID database. But, until Mabel joined the dots, she remained unknown and unnamed. It is this unique intervention from our team which makes me especially proud of the work this hotline does, and the impact for victims and survivors is immense.”
As teens face a ‘crisis’ of online sexual abuse and exploitation, the IWF looks at why getting imagery of older teens removed can be difficult for some moderators.
