The site says it is assisting police and has since updated its age-verification system to “further reduce the chance” of this happening again. “I don’t understand why people are paying so much money for this,” she told the BBC. In a statement, OnlyFans says it could not respond specifically to the anonymous reports we were told about without the account details.
Leah had “big issues” growing up and missed a lot of education, Caitlyn says. Naked photographs of her were once child porn shared around school without her consent. Adults may offer a young person affection and attention through their ‘friendship,’ but also buy them gifts both virtually and in real life.
“We use a combination of state-of-the-art technology together with human monitoring and review to prevent children under the age of 18 from sharing content on OnlyFans. “The company are not doing enough to put in place the safeguards that prevent children exploiting the opportunity to generate money, but also for children to be exploited,” Mr Bailey says. As a part of the investigation, we also spoke to schools, police forces and child protection experts who told us they are hearing from under 18-year-olds whose experiences on the site have had serious consequences.
- Up to 3,096 internet domains with child sexual abuse materials were blocked in 2024 amid Globe’s #MakeItSafePH campaign.
- The fact that this trend is revealed in multiple sources tends to undermine arguments that it is because of reduced reporting or changes in investigatory or statistical procedures.
- The most likely places for such behavior to start include social media, messaging apps, and chat rooms – including on gaming devices.
- We can give you more general information, but I think that it may be helpful for you to reach out to a lawyer to discuss your specific questions.
Philippines: Authorities look to tackle online child sex abuse
But the consequences of children sharing explicit images – especially when the content could be leaked – may continue to haunt them for a long time to come. Andy Burrows, the NSPCC’s head of policy for child safety online, sees its impact differently. He says the site blurs the lines between influencer culture and sexualised behaviour on social media for young people, and presents a “toxic cocktail of risks”. The girl later revealed to staff that she had been posting “very sexualised, pornographic” images, says the school’s head of safeguarding, who also told us about a 12 year-old girl who said she had used the site to contact adult creators and asked to meet up. British subscription site OnlyFans is failing to prevent underage users from selling and appearing in explicit videos, a BBC investigation has found. A young person may be asked to send photos or videos of themselves to a ‘friend’ that they might have met online.
Is my brother’s child pornography watching a problem?
Hertfordshire Police told us that a 14-year-old girl had managed to use her grandmother’s passport and bank details to sell explicit images. Caitlyn says it was stated “everywhere” on other online accounts that her daughter was 17. There is no obligation for a website to investigate, but OnlyFans told the BBC it checks social media when verifying accounts. Leah’s age was directly reported to OnlyFans by an anonymous social media account in late January. The company says this led to a moderator reviewing the account and double-checking her ID.
A joint raid by German and Dutch authorities resulted in the seizure of a hard drive with around 72,000 videos of child sex abuse. In the course of the six episodes, CBC journalist Daemon Fairless examines the background of Benjamin Faulkner and the course of events that led to his capture. Please note that although there may not be harmful intent, even having adult pornography or sexual toys in the home where a child could come across them has been viewed by authorities as sexual abuse in some circumstances. Head of the Communication and Information System Security Research (CISSReC), Pratama Persadha, stated that sexual crimes against children is not a new problem. With the development of the internet, sexual crimes against children began to rise during the 1990s through various bulletin boards that existed at that time. Among the child pornography offenders referred to prosecutors last year, 44.1 percent were teenagers, nearly double their share from a decade earlier, according to data released by the National Police Agency.