Preventing sexual abuse and exploitation of children : Daphne booklets : issues and experiences in combating violence against children, young people and women.
Date: 2007-07-10
Institutions: Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security
Subjects: EU programme, child, child pornography, child protection, paedophilia, sexual tourism, sexual violence, young person

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European Commission

Daphne Booklets: Issues and experiences in combating violence against children, young people and women
Preventing sexual abuse and exploitation of children

Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities

2007 –  27 pp. – 21.0 x 29.7 cm

ISBN 92-79-03136-8

© European Communities, 2007

Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.
Printed in Belgium, June 2007
PRINTED ON WHITE CHLORINE-FREE PAPER

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Daphne Booklets: Issues and experiences in combating violence 
against children, young people and women

Preventing sexual 
abuse and exploitation 
of children

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Disclaimer 

This booklet was written by Dr June Kane in collaboration with the Daphne Programme management team of the European Commission. 
Its contents do not necessarily reﬂ ect the policies of the European Union or the positions of its Member States.

ISBN 92-79-03136-8

English

Available in other EU languages at:

http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/funding/daphne3/funding_daphne3_en.htm

European Commission

DG Justice, Freedom and Security 

Daphne Programme

B-1049 Brussels, Belgium

Author: June Kane

First printing: June 2007

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Introduction

In  2007,  the  European  Commission’s  Daphne  Programme  marks  a  decade  of  work  to  prevent  violence  against 
children, young people and women in Europe, and to support victims of such violence.

‘Daphne’ grew out of growing concern about one particular form of violence that hit the headlines in 1996: sexual 
violence  against  children. The  abduction,  sexual  violation  and  subsequent  death  of  two  little  girls  horriﬁ ed  the 
people of Europe and continue to mobilise our commitment today. The events of 1996 are never far from our minds 
as we continue our work to ensure that the children of Europe receive all the protection we can give them, not only 
from sexual abuse and exploitation but from all forms of violence. 

Since taking up the Vice-Presidency of the European Commission and in particular taking on responsibility for the 
Directorate-General of Justice, Freedom and Security, I have made the protection of children’s rights a priority. On 
4 July 2006, the Commission issued a communication that is a ﬁ rst step in developing a wide-ranging EU strategy 
on the rights of the child that aims at promoting and safeguarding children’s rights in all the Commission’s inter-
nal and external actions and that will support the eﬀ orts of the Member States in this ﬁ eld. The communication, 
Towards an EU strategy on the rights of the child, calls on Member States, the European institutions and other stake-
holders to take an active part in developing the strategy and so to contribute to its success.

I am personally committed to following through the groundwork laid by the communication and to supporting 
and promoting EC programmes that will turn strategy into positive outcomes for children, both at policy and pro-
gramme levels. I am pleased that the Daphne Programme has been able to play such an important role in building 
a critical mass so vital to making a real diﬀ erence for children.

Ten years after it began, the Daphne Programme continues to be a positive example of what can be done to 
make things better for the children of Europe, day by day, while at the same time improving our understanding 
and how we work.

Since  it  began  in  early  1997,  Daphne  has  supported  NGOs,  public  authorities  and  research  institutions  running 
transnational ‘Daphne projects’ in all the Member States of the European Union. These projects have involved more 
than 1,000 diﬀ erent organisations, working together in actions covering research and surveys, training and educa-
tional materials, targeted awareness raising, networking and exchange of experience, identiﬁ cation and sharing of 

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3

good practices, and a range of direct actions with immediate impact on victims of violence and those at risk. Year 
by year, the knowledge and experience that have come out of Daphne-supported projects have spread across the 
world, shared in meetings, conferences, through publications and exchange of personnel and, of course, on-line.  

Now, I am very pleased to be able to launch this series of Daphne Booklets, which aims to bring together some of 
the experiences and conclusions of these projects. Each paper gives an overview of the issue, the legal and policy 
framework in Europe and the outcomes of the Daphne experience.  In the ﬁ rst series, the following papers are avail-
able or in preparation:

1. Preventing sexual abuse and exploitation of children
2. Traﬃ  cking and labour exploitation
3. Harmful traditional practices
4.  Racist and ethnic violence

It is appropriate that the very ﬁ rst title should be on the very subject that gave birth to Daphne in the ﬁ rst place and 
that it should focus on preventing such horrors from occurring again. I hope the Daphne Booklets will play a part in 
our continuing eﬀ orts to make sure that the children of Europe enjoy their rights and remain safe from the violence 
that is too often a part of their lives.  

Franco Frattini
Vice President of the European Commission,
in charge of Justice, Freedom  and Security

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4

 
 
 
 
Foreword 

Since  the  United  Nations  Secretary-General,  Koﬁ   Annan,  appointed  me  to  lead  the  Study  on  Violence  against 
Children, which was presented to the General Assembly in October 2006, I have learned a great deal about violence 
in all its forms. It is distressing in the extreme to document the many ways in which violence occurs in the lives of 
children and young people all over the world, but one purpose of the study is to draw attention to the violent reality 
of children’s lives in the 21st century and to call for action to change it. Despite this, I have stressed that the study 
is not an exercise in compiling shocking stories of violence from around the world but the ﬁ rst step in a concerted 
eﬀ ort to ﬁ nd ways to stop it.

It is, nevertheless, a fact that sexual violence against children – in its most extreme forms: sexual abuse and com-
mercial sexual exploitation – is both shocking and horriﬁ c. It pierces to the heart of a child’s innermost being. It can 
destroy their trust in adults, the very people who have a duty of care towards them. And it can have serious conse-
quences on their physical and psychological health. Article 34 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of 
the Child, which has been ratiﬁ ed by all the countries of the European Union, calls upon state parties to “undertake 
to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse”. The Optional Protocol on the Sale of 
Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography further reinforces this commitment. A number of other United 
Nations  instruments  add  to  the  international  legal  protections  for  children,  including  the  International  Labour 
Organisation’s Convention No.182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labour, which treats commercial sexual exploitation 
and the abuse of children in pornography as the worst forms of child labour; and the Supplementary Protocol to the 
UN Traﬃ  cking Convention, known as the Palermo Protocol, which states clearly that no person below the age of 18 
can ever be considered to have willingly consented to being traﬃ  cked, for whatever purpose. The truth is, however, 
that these international treaties oﬀ er most protection to children when they are comprehensively and eﬀ ectively 
translated into national laws and rigorously enforced, but that is sadly not always the case.

Governments  in  Europe  have  been  at  the  forefront  of  legal  revision  to  take  into  account  the  rights  of  children 
to be protected from sexual abuse and exploitation. Law enforcement eﬀ orts have given examples, especially in 
cross-border co-operation, that are being shared throughout the world. Individual countries’ police forces regularly 
exchange expertise and personnel, and bodies such as Europol take individual countries’ experiences and use it for 
regional impact.

NGOs in this region continue to work on the ground, alongside children and young people, to ﬁ nd new ways to 
protect children from sexual violence and support those who have fallen victim to it. This region has provided some 
exceptional examples of how organisations can also work across national borders – just as the perpetrators of sexual 
violence often do – so that the children of Europe do not fall through the cracks that sometimes open up between 
national eﬀ orts. The methodologies, training programmes, guidelines and other tools that have been developed 
have relevance, not only in this region and beyond but also in eﬀ orts to confront other forms of violence.

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5

The ﬁ rst World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation in 1996 was held in the wake of terrible events in 
Europe that brought the problem of sexual violence against children to the attention of the whole world. The death 
of two little girls in Belgium focused everyone’s attention on this particularly horrendous form of violence – the 
violence that eats away at the heart of childhood, damaging a child’s sense of self-worth and making them question 
their relationships with others. This has lasting repercussions into adulthood and family life. 

We knew then that we could not let such violence continue. Diﬃ  cult as it is, we have to go on looking for ways 
to end sexual violence against children and, indeed, other forms of violence that show all too clearly that we are 
letting our children down. 

Key to this is gathering new knowledge, testing innovative methodologies, analysing the results of pilot actions 
and sharing this with others in a spirit of learning and capacity building. In recent years we have learned much 
about the sexual abuse and exploitation of children, and about the programmes and practices that help ensure 
that children enjoy their right to protection. There is still much to learn, however. Work must continue until no child 
suﬀ ers the terrible trauma of sexual violence and we must be serious about translating our promises into action. In 
the course of preparing the Violence Study, I have spoken to many children all over the world. It is clear that they are 
tired of words and declarations without implementation. Children cannot wait any longer.

Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro
Independent Expert
UN Secretary-General’s Study on Violence against Children

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6

The problem

The use of children (under the age of 18) for the sexual gratiﬁ cation of others is not a new phenomenon. For as long 
as people have been writing and recording human life, there have been accounts of how adults – usually men but 
sometimes women – have preyed upon children for pleasure, in the name of religion, to fulﬁ l pathological urges, in 
an attempt to enforce a relationship of power, or just because they think it is acceptable to do so. 

It was not until 1996, however, that the use of children for sexual purposes came to broad public attention in Europe. 
The outcry and widespread condemnation with which it was met put the topic ﬁ rmly on the political agenda in all 
the countries of Europe and, indeed, the world.

In 1996, the coincidence of two quite separate events brought into the open these subjects which had for so long 
gone unspoken, except in a generally romanticised form in literature and art.

On  15  August  1996,  police  in  Marcinelles,  a  suburb  of  Charleroi,  Belgium,  rescued  two  young  girls  from  sexual 
captivity. Laetitia Delhez, then 14, had disappeared on 9 August between the local swimming pool and her home. 
Twelve-year-old Sabine Dardenne had been missing since 29 May when she did not arrive at school. The rescue 
followed police requests for a media ‘blackout’ on the story of the missing girls and possible links with the disap-
pearances of four more girls: Eefj e Lambrechts, 19, and An Marchal, 17, both from a town in eastern Belgium, and 
two eight year-olds, Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo, missing since 24 June 1995 from their homes near Liège. The 
bodies of these four girls were unearthed in the investigation following the rescue of Laetitia and Sabine.

All six had been abducted by Marc Dutroux, a convicted rapist and petty criminal who imprisoned the girls in a roughly 
built dungeon in one of his homes where he had repeatedly drugged and raped them. Why he did this has been the 
topic of much speculation. Although the popular press commonly brands him as a paedophile, there are signs that this 
is not in fact the case1. Paedophiles display consistent behaviours that Dutroux did not. At his trial, Dutroux claimed 
that he had been asked to ‘acquire’ young girls for unspeciﬁ ed abusers who had loosely formed what is commonly 
called a ‘ring’. This has never been proven but it is consistent with Dutroux’s involvement in other forms of traﬃ  cking 
– he was investigated for selling stolen cars into Eastern Europe, for example, and was subsequently shown to engage 
in other forms of criminal activity. Investigations turned up more of Dutroux’s illicit activities, including the production 
of pornographic videos involving children, both boys and girls, which he attempted to sell for proﬁ t. However, it is 
certain that Dutroux did sexually abuse the girls while he held them and he drugged them to keep them compliant.

1.  J. Kane, Chasse à l’enfant, Editions Ramsay, Paris 1997, p.53. Published in English as Sold for Sex, Arena, London 1998, p.35. 

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Whatever the motivations of Dutroux, the case prompted public discussion of many of the elements that are gen-
erally included under the heading ‘sexual abuse and exploitation of children’: the capturing of images of children 
being sexually abused in order to produce child pornography; the rape of a minor for personal sexual gratiﬁ cation; 
the acquiring of a child to be sold for proﬁ t (to paedophiles who prefer children under the age of puberty, or child 
sex abusers who generally prefer older children in their teens). If the abducted children had been moved to another 
town or country – perhaps along the routes Dutroux reportedly used to traﬃ  c stolen cars – then they would have 
been considered to have been traﬃ  cked.

By sheer historical coincidence, as people were trying to come to terms with the horriﬁ c news coming out of Belgium, 
hundreds of government representatives, United Nations agency delegates, children’s rights activists, researchers and 
journalists were making their way to Stockholm, Sweden, for the ﬁ rst ever World Congress against Commercial Sexual 
Exploitation of Children2. A delegation of children and young people were similarly preparing to meet and then report 
their conclusions to the Stockholm Congress delegates. The ﬁ rst World Congress was co-sponsored by the Govern-
ment of Sweden, the United Nations’ children’s agency UNICEF, the NGO Group for the Convention on the Rights of the 
Child and ECPAT, a global campaign against child prostitution that had begun in Bangkok in the mid-1990s3. 

Because ECPAT had ﬁ rst called for an international meeting of this nature, the title reﬂ ected the organisation’s major area 
of activity: the commercial sexual exploitation of children. This includes the prostitution of children, traﬃ  cking for sexual 
purposes, the production, sale, distribution and use of child pornography, and child sex tourism, a speciﬁ c area of activity 
in which child sex abusers travel alone or in groups on ‘package holidays’ speciﬁ cally to seek out children for sex.

The ﬁ rst World Congress, however, despite its title, did not conﬁ ne its coverage to commercial sexual exploitation. 
Papers and discussions covered all aspects of child sex abuse and exploitation. It threw light on many areas of con-
fusion, including, for example, the important diﬀ erence between paedophiles whose abuse of children arises from 
a recognised sexual deviance that can be treated (although with varying degrees of success), and child sex abusers 
whose motivations are multiple and who fall into many diﬀ erent categories. 

These men (and sometimes women) are often forgotten in discussions of child sex abuse and exploitation. They 
have no condition that can be treated and rarely display any ‘symptoms’ that mark them as predatory. They may 
abuse just once or regularly. Often the men are regular adult prostitute users but they may also be young men trav-
elling together on holiday who are looking for a ‘good time’, or older men and women looking to dominate more 
vulnerable sex partners they can identify as weak, ‘unworthy’ or ‘diﬀ erent’. One speciﬁ c sub-group of sex abusers 
comprises the men (and sometimes women) who sexually abuse their own children. This is also known as incest. 
At the Europe/Central Asia regional meeting preparing input to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Study on 
Violence against Children in 2005, the working group looking at violence in the home and family noted that sexual 
abuse in the family has been the ‘poor cousin’ to concerns about the commercial sexual exploitation of children4. 
Children are most at risk, in fact, of sexual abuse by family members, relatives or other adults known to them. 

2. For documents from both the ﬁ rst and second World Congresses, see www.csecworldcongress.org 
3.  ECPAT (End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism) began with a group of campaigners who wanted to draw the attention of policy-makers and those who 
inﬂ uence them, including the general public, to the prostitution of young children in the countries of South-East Asia. ECPAT’s remit soon grew to cover the 
commercial sexual exploitation of children all over the world and, following the ﬁ rst World Congress, it became a global network of NGOs implementing 
programmes at many diﬀ erent levels in this area. In recognition of its new role and status, ECPAT retained its acronym but changed the name behind it, 
to End Child Prostitution, Pornography and Traﬃ  cking.

4.  Violence against children in Europe and Central Asia: The problem, actions taken and challenges outstanding. Summary report of the Europe/Central 

Asia regional consultation for the United Nations Secretary-General’s Study on Violence against Children, 2006. See www.violencestudy.org

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The events of 1996 opened up a whole new can of worms that Europe, and indeed the rest of the world, was hardly 
ready to deal with. The delegates meeting in Stockholm began to put in place some ﬁ rst attempts at strategy in the 
form of the ‘Stockholm Agenda for Action’ and supported this with a clear condemnation of child sexual abuse and 
exploitation and a call to arms: the ‘Stockholm Declaration’ (1996)5. 

When they returned to their countries, governments began the long task of fulﬁ lling the commitments they had made in 
Stockholm. The European Commission delegation, led by the-then Commissioner, Anita Gradin, who had been a keynote 
speaker in Stockholm, called an urgent hearing of European NGOs, law enforcement specialists, members of the Commis-
sion and European Parliament (MEPs), and others in relevant areas. The aim of the hearing was to explore what practical 
actions could be initiated to implement the policies that the European Parliament had already begun putting in place.

Out  of  this  hearing  emerged  two  new  Commission  action  programmes. The  STOP  Programme  focused  on  pro-
moting law enforcement and professional exchange, and training in the ﬁ eld of sexual abuse and exploitation of 
children, which later came to focus more speciﬁ cally on traﬃ  cking. The Daphne Initiative was created as a one-year 
budget line to support NGO projects in the areas of research, networking, direct action, and training and tools pro-
duction in the area of violence against children, young people and women, including sexual violence. After its initial 
success, the Daphne Initiative was renewed for one more year, then another, and in 2000 was given a legal base and 
became a multi-year Commission programme which, in 2007, enters its third phase.

5.  The 2nd World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children was held in Yokohama, Japan, in December 2001. At this global meeting, 
governments reported on progress made and a wide range of workshops promoted the exchange of experience at a number of levels. The papers from 
Yokohama are also available on the World Congress website. Delegates at Yokohama endorsed the Yokohama Global Commitment (2001), a reiteration of 
the Stockholm Declaration and a widening of the agenda to cover non-commercial abuse. Both before and after 2001, regular review meetings have been 
held in many regions to develop and monitor regional action plans. The Europe action plan, known as the Budapest Commitment, is monitored through a 
logframe-based tool called REACT. It was administered across the region in 2005. The results are available on the Council of Europe website: www.coe.int 

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Some facts and ﬁ gures

A number of studies in the region indicate that sexual abuse is prevalent and that girls in particular are at risk. Very 
few cases are reported, however. This is often the result of the complex inter-play of adult/child relationships in the 
family. Where a father, another adult member of the family (older brother, uncle or cousin) or a close family friend 
abuses a child, it is not uncommon for family members to be aware of it but to reject the possibility that it can be 
true. Sexual violence, in comparison to physical and psychological violence, is universally condemned and yet, per-
haps even more than non-sexual physical violence, it remains hidden behind a wall of silence. This silence results 
from disbelief, anger, fear or shame that can be so overwhelming that the person who should speak out comes to 
believe that the abuse is not, in fact, happening.

And yet sexual violence against children in the family occurs much more often than has been previously recognised. 
An analysis of prevalence studies of sexual abuse both inside and outside the family in 14 European countries sug-
gests rates varying from 9 to 33% for girls and from 3 to 15% for boys6. In the Czech Republic, for example, a 1995 
Pink Line retrospective study found that 30% of all girls or women and 20 to 25% of all men had been confronted 
with sexual abuse7. Two-thirds of them reported contact sexual abuse, about half of which included intercourse. In 
the case of sexual abuse of girls, the perpetrator was a man from within the family in 50% of the cases; in 25% of 
cases it was a stranger and in the remaining cases it was someone known to the child, for example a teacher. In the 
case of sexual abuse of boys, half of the perpetrators were strangers. 

Moreover, conﬁ dential retrospective interviews with young adults carried out across Europe and Central Asia sug-
gest that oﬃ  cial ﬁ gures far underestimate the problem. Most data collected relate to reported cases and those that 
lead to a conviction, but it is clear that most incidences, in fact, are never brought to the attention of the authorities. 
Deﬁ nitions used are also inconsistent and result not only in data that are not comparable but also in some cases of 
information ‘disappearing’, hidden behind classiﬁ cations such as ‘indecent exposure’ or unspeciﬁ ed ‘assault’.

The  key  diﬀ erence  between  sexual  abuse  and  sexual  exploitation  of  children  is  generally  considered  to  be  the 
commercial transaction/motive. People who sexually abuse children do not normally make a ﬁ nancial proﬁ t from 
it. Often they are known to the child – relatives other than parents make up the highest percentage of child sex 
abusers in the countries of North America, for example, although parents and step-parents also ﬁ gure among those 
convicted of child sex oﬀ ences. Friends of the family and others with ties to the child or family are also among the 
most frequent perpetrators of child sexual abuse. Child sex abusers prey upon children for pleasure or control but 
rarely for proﬁ t.

The people who sexually exploit children for proﬁ t are a very diverse group. They include pimps and brothel owners, 
intermediaries such as those working in the entertainment and tourism industries as hotel clerks, tour operators, or 
bar and restaurant operators. They also include those, often women, who recruit desperate or deceived youngsters 
into prostitution with the promise of work and a better life who then sell or traﬃ  c them into sexual slavery. Clients 
who purchase sex from minors are often included in this group although they do not make a commercial proﬁ t as 

6. Violence against children in Europe and Central Asia.
7. E. Vaníčková, Pink Line, 1995.

10

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such but do enter into a commercial transaction. Then there are the taxi drivers, transport operators, corrupt law 
enforcement  and  migration  oﬃ  cials,  and  even  those  who  produce  or  provide  forged  or  altered  documents  (for 
example false or stolen birth certiﬁ cates to ‘prove’ that a child is older than she is). A veritable army of people proﬁ t 
in one way or another from the sexual exploitation of a child8. 

It is clear that sexual abuse and sexual exploitation work in very diﬀ erent ways and involve quite diﬀ erent motivations, 
modus operandi and proﬁ les. Understanding these diﬀ erences is key to acting to prevent abuse and exploitation.

The actual scope of both sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children remains unknown. Figures are regularly 
quoted: one recurrent ﬁ gure that appears in literature is that ‘one million children worldwide enter the sex trade 
each year’, but there is no statistical basis for this ﬁ gure and it has been quoted for more than a decade without sup-
porting data. The fact is that sexual violence against children is generally hidden and thus impossible to quantify. 

It is relatively easy to acquire data on criminal convictions of sex abusers and those facilitating the prostitution 
of children, but these give an indication only of those cases brought to court and successfully prosecuted. Some 
countries make statistics available that relate to reported cases, whether or not they have resulted in legal action. 
The Danish police, for example, received 2 701 reports of ‘sexual crimes’ in 2003. Of these, 450 of the victims were 
children under the age of nine and 1 333 were between 10 and 19 years of age. While useful for identifying possible 
trends, however, such data do not accurately describe the scope of the problem. 

Firstly, they relate only to those cases that are reported. Secondly, they do not specify the nature of the ‘sexual 
crimes’  committed,  nor  the  person  who  committed  them. Thirdly,  they  do  not  disaggregate  information  on  the 
victims, relating the age of the victim to the age of sexual majority in law, for example, or specifying the sex of the 
child or other important characteristics, such as disability or ethnicity. The same is true of data collected through 
medical facilities at which children and young people may present themselves with symptoms or injuries linked 
to sexual violence. Often the source of the injury is not recorded and in many cases the links are not even made 
between, for example, the self-harm that a child may inﬂ ict as a result of trauma and the sexual abuse that is the 
origin of that trauma.

Other EU countries also attempt to provide data but not only are these similarly compromised by the data collection 
issues noted above, they are also not even collected through similar processes or within comparable frameworks. 
In 2005, for example, Finland provided a ﬁ gure of 500-600 cases of sexual abuse/exploitation of children per year. 
Germany reported ‘about 23 000 cases’ in that same round of reporting. In 2001, France documented 5 900 cases 
of sexual abuse. Portugal does collect data by age range, albeit minimally, categorising victims of sexual abuse or 
exploitation as ‘up to the age of 14’ and ‘from 15 to 19’. In 2002, Portugal reported 154 “crimes against the liberty 
and sexual auto-determination of minors up to the age of 14” and 49 in the 15-19 age bracket. Sweden reported in 
2005 that no national statistics existed, and most other Member States of the European Union do not make ﬁ gures 
public even where they are available. Given the wide discrepancy, even in the few ﬁ gures quoted here, it is unlikely 
that any of the ﬁ gures are truly reliable indicators of the scope of the problem. Mapping the extent of sexual abuse 
and exploitation of children in Europe remains an unmet challenge.

8.  Much is written about the concept of ‘demand’ for child sex. In reality, ‘demand’ is a complex issue and includes a variety of motives, modus operandi 
and actors. For more on this, see J. Kane, Understanding demand for children in the sex trade: an outstanding challenge, a workshop paper for the 
European regional review meeting of the World Congress, Ljubljana, July 2005 (www.coe.int). See also J. O’Connell Davidson, The sex exploiter, ECPAT 
1996, and other works by the same author.

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National and European 
legislative frameworks

In the years since 1996, governments in the European Union have made great strides in reviewing and revising 
national legislation to give children greater protection from sexual abuse and exploitation. A review of just some of 
the legal frameworks in place, however, shows that, despite major eﬀ orts to address the protection of children in 
law, there are wide discrepancies in the nature and scope of these laws and great inconsistencies.

There have been some positive trends in the way governments have approached legislation relating to the sexual 
abuse and exploitation of children9. Increasingly, legal revisions have taken much more account of the nature of 
the perpetrator, and the relationship between the perpetrator and the child. Many legal revisions since 1996, for 
example, have introduced stiﬀ er penalties for sexual abuse committed by someone in a position of care or respon-
sibility towards the child. The abuse of parental or carer authority reﬂ ects greater understanding of the prevalence 
of sexual abuse within the family or the child’s social circle. In 2004, for example, Austria introduced the concept of 
“abuse of a position of authority” into its criminal law and since 2000 the Belgian Penal Code has allowed for more 
severe punishments for those who abuse a child within the family.

Danish law is expansive on the nature of the relationship between the child and the abuser. The Criminal Code 
states  that  any  person  who  has  sexual  intercourse  with  a  relative  below  him  in  lineal  descent  shall  be  liable  to 
imprisonment for a term not exceeding six years. Step-parents, adoptive and foster parents, and those responsible 
for a child’s education are speciﬁ cally dealt with in the law, as are brothers and sisters who abuse siblings. Hungary 
considers the fact that an abuser in charge of the victim’s education, supervision, care or medical treatment is an 
aggravating circumstance, and Lithuania, Portugal and Slovenia also have provisions in law that take account of the 
relationship between the abuser and victim.

Despite an increased focus on the speciﬁ c nature of the oﬀ ender (rather than the oﬀ ence), most countries have 
not yet gone beyond legal revision and reformed their approach to implementation of the law. Few countries, for 
example, have introduced sanctions such as the tracking of convicted sex oﬀ enders, treatment (so-called ‘chemical 
castration’ or a combination of counselling and medical intervention) or sex oﬀ enders’ registers. France and the 
United Kingdom are among the countries in the European Union to have introduced these surveillance/treatment 
approaches.

The majority of EU countries have attempted to enhance protection against sexual abuse and exploitation through 
legal  provisions.  Austria,  the  Czech  Republic,  Denmark,  Finland,  France,  Lithuania,  Luxembourg,  Slovenia  and 
Sweden have all reviewed legislation from a protection point of view. Lithuania, for example, adopted a National 
Programme against Commercial Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse of Children in January 2000 and, in August 
2001, a Supplement to the Lithuania Law on the Fundamentals of Protection of the Rights of the Child. Among 
other things, this empowers the Child Rights Protection Agency, alone or with the police, to remove a child from the 
parents or legal representatives and transfer the child to guardianship if she/he is considered at risk.

9.  Most of the information in this section is taken from government responses to the REACT questionnaire or to the questionnaire developed for reporting to 

the United Nations Secretary-General’s Study on Violence against Children. See references elsewhere in these notes.

12

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Those who act as intermediaries in the sexual abuse and exploitation of children are also increasingly the focus of 
revised and reinforced laws. In Spain the Penal Code has been updated to include sexual abuse of minors whether 
there is commercial proﬁ t or not, and also (Article 189.4) includes the crime of “corruption of minors” and inaction 
on the part of those responsible for the child if that child is encouraged to engage in prostitution or corrupt acts. 
Legal reform in Austria in 2004 introduced provisions dealing with those who “encourage the prostitution of minors 
and  the  involvement  of  minors  in  the  production  of  pornographic  materials”.  Estonia,  Latvia,  Lithuania,  Luxem-
bourg, Slovenia and Sweden also specify sanctions for those who are considered ‘intermediaries’ between the child 
and the ‘client’. The German Criminal Code has been expanded to punish the “rewarding and approval” of sexual 
abuse, sexual coercion, rape and dissemination of child pornography on the Internet.

New technologies understandably feature in a number of new laws and legal reforms across Europe. The produc-
tion and distribution of child pornography, including using the Internet, is prohibited in all Member States, but not 
all have yet criminalised the ‘mere possession’ of child pornography, whether downloaded or otherwise acquired. 
In 2004, Sweden drafted a bill that greatly reinforced legislation in the area of child pornography. Virtually all asso-
ciation with child pornography images, including possession, constitutes a criminal oﬀ ence. The legislation more-
over applies to all kinds of media and therefore also to the electronic environment. The import and export of child 
pornography are also prohibited. 

The  process  of  legal  reform  has  also  taken  other  distinct  directions.  Since  1996,  many  countries  have  reviewed 
legislation relating to sex tourism and to oﬀ ences committed by their own nationals in other countries. Portugal’s 
Criminal Code, for example, stipulates punishment for any person who, while abroad, makes a child under the age 
of 16 practice prostitution or signiﬁ cant sexual acts. Most countries in Europe now have extraterritorial provisions 
in their laws, allowing them to convict nationals and sometimes permanent residents for abuse and exploitation 
committed in a third country, even where that country may not criminalise such acts. In practice, however, few such 
cases are brought to court.

In recent years, some countries have also taken steps to enshrine in law the protection of children who have been 
sexually abused or exploited and who either ﬁ nd themselves in conﬂ ict with the law or involved in legal proceed-
ings. France, for example, has amended its laws to recognise the child as a victim and provides support to these 
children.  Since  January  2002,  the  Czech  Republic’s  Code  of  Criminal  Procedure  has  included  faster  and  simpler 
criminal procedures to ease the burden on the child victim and reduce the risk of secondary victimisation. This 
is  an  important  area  of  law  reform  because,  too  often,  children  who  have  found  themselves  in  prostitution,  for 
example, have been treated as the criminals while those attempting to purchase sex from them have been let oﬀ  
with a warning. In that regard, Sweden is one of the ﬁ rst countries not only to have paid serious attention to the 
‘johns’ who buy sex from minors but also to have introduced legislation and enhanced enforcement to target these 
men, in addition to the pimps and intermediaries who make a proﬁ t from the commercial transactions involved in 
prostitution of the child.

Finally, in recent years a number of countries have introduced legislation relating to the traﬃ  cking of human beings 
for labour and/or sexual exploitation. The German Criminal Code, for example, has speciﬁ c provisions to protect 
children from traﬃ  cking and Portugal’s Penal Code lists the traﬃ  cking of minors as a criminal act, whether or not 
the agent or the victim are Portuguese. Very few countries, however, have to date amended their legislation to 
adequately cover the traﬃ  cking of children for sexual exploitation, and in too many countries children who have 
been moved across national borders are still seen as ‘illegal migrants’ rather than victims.

It is clear from this brief review of the major elements of law covering sexual abuse and exploitation of children in 
some European countries that there is very little harmonisation or consistency in the legal frameworks that purport 
to protect the children of Europe from sexual violence.

The diﬀ erent categorisation of sexual violence against children remains a major issue. Diﬀ erent ‘labels’ are attached 
to child sexual abuse and exploitation, and make comparability and consistency unachievable. Child sexual abuse 
is  variously  covered  under  legislation  relating  to  rape,  sexual  assault,  child  sexual  abuse,  endangering  a  minor, 
seduction, sexual coercion, molestation, attacks on decency and outrage to public morals. 

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13

‘Children’ and ‘minors’ are deﬁ ned diﬀ erently, with some countries setting the age of majority at 14, some at 16, 
and others at 18. There are variations, too, in the age of sexual consent. Given the open borders in Europe and easy 
movement across them, this means that children and those who seek to abuse or exploit them may move from one 
judicial regime to another, and that the level of protection provided to children diﬀ ers across jurisdictions. And yet, 
as early as 1997, the European Council of Ministers had adopted a Joint Action calling for the criminalisation of all 
forms of sexual exploitation of children and eﬀ orts to harmonise laws, and for the extraterritorial application of all 
relevant legislation. While most countries in Europe do now apply the principle of extraterritoriality to laws relating 
to child sexual abuse and exploitation, there has been no major move towards harmonised laws.

The European Commission has, since 1996, regularly reviewed progress in eﬀ orts to protect children from sexual 
abuse and exploitation and to prevent it occurring. A number of decisions have been taken that act as frameworks 
within which Member States of the European Union can plan national initiatives, share information and expertise, 
and co-operate at a regional level. In December 2000, the European Commission issued a Communication on com-
bating traﬃ  cking in human beings and the sexual exploitation of children, which resulted in the Council of the EU 
adopting a Framework Decision on combating sexual exploitation of children and child pornography (22 Decem-
ber 2003)10, and on combating traﬃ  cking in human beings (19 July 2002)11. These both aimed to address “discrep-
ancies and divergences” and to develop “eﬃ  cient judicial and law enforcement co-operation” in the areas of sexual 
exploitation of children, child pornography and traﬃ  cking. 

The  Framework  Decision  covering  sexual  exploitation  and  child  pornography  obliges  Member  States  of  the  EU 
to ensure that intentional acts concerned with child pornography are punishable in law. Despite some lingering 
inconsistencies relating to treatment of the notion of ‘child’ – for example must the child depicted be a ‘real’ child, 
or does the law cover ‘computer-generated’ children12 – there has been considerable progress in making not only 
the production and distribution but also the possession of child pornography illegal. This is particularly important 
because often law enforcement bodies are able to trace producers or distributors of child pornography through 
their ‘clients’. There have consequently been a number of very successful ‘stings’ on child pornography users and 
distributors in recent years.

This  same  Decision  also  contains  considerable  directive  detail  on  elements  of  law  that  will  protect  children  from 
sexual exploitation. It obliges Member States, for example, to ensure that those who facilitate the sexual exploitation 
of children (for example, brothel owners or pimps) are punishable in law, and covers such issues as penalties and 
aggravating circumstances. At European level, in fact, there is a solid basis for further harmonisation of national laws.

In 2005, the Commission issued a new Communication on ﬁ ghting traﬃ  cking in human beings13 that focused on 
concrete measures in this area and this was accompanied by a detailed Action Plan14. This Communication takes 
a clear rights-based approach to the subject of human traﬃ  cking (while not neglecting the law enforcement and 
organised crime/ﬁ nancial aspects of both traﬃ  cking and facilitation of illegal migration). It is quite clear on the 
need to identify victims of traﬃ  cking as such and not to pursue them as criminals, and calls on Member States to 
provide security and support to those who have been traﬃ  cked, including protection if they are to give evidence 
against their traﬃ  ckers. Concerning children, the Communication calls for more attention and research on traﬃ  ck-
ing in children for “forced child labour” which includes sexual exploitation and notes the links between such exploi-
tation and “the failure to secure birth registration and the lack of access to basic education”. The Action Plan calls for 
measures to identify promptly potential victims of traﬃ  cking at the EU’s borders and for policies to be reviewed to 
protect unaccompanied migrant minors who are a particularly vulnerable group. 

Most recently, in July 2006, the European Commission announced, in a Communication on the Rights of the Child15, 
a range of measures to better protect children, including plans for one single Europe-wide telephone number for 
child helplines and one for hotlines dedicated to missing and sexually exploited children in the EU Member States. 
This recognises the fact that helplines and hotlines have been very successful in many countries of the EU and have 
ﬁ lled  a  documented  need  for  children  (in  the  case  of  helplines)  and  children,  families  and  the  reporting  public 

10. OJ L 13, 20.01.2004, p. 44.
11. OJ L 203, 01.08.2002, p. 1.
12. The Framework Decision in fact covers “pornography where there is no actual sexual exploitation behind the depiction”.
13. Communication ‘Fighting Traﬃ  cking in Human Beings – An Integrated Approach and Proposals for an Action Plan’, COM(2005) 514 ﬁ nal.
14. OJ C311, 09.12.2005, p.1.
15.  Communication ‘Towards an EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child’, COM(2006)367 ﬁ nal, with an inventory of EC actions aﬀ ecting children’s rights 

in annex, SEC(2006)889.

14

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(in the case of hotlines). A single number for people to use to access these diﬀ erent services also reﬂ ects the increas-
ingly ‘seamless’ nature of Europe and growing mobility of people. Keeping abreast of new technologies, the Com-
mission also called upon the banking sector and credit card companies to take action to prevent the use of credit 
cards to buy child pornography on-line.

The Council of Europe has also introduced several instruments that cover areas speciﬁ cally related to the sexual abuse 
and exploitation of children, including the Convention on Cybercrime (2001) and Recommendation Rec (2001) 16 
on the protection of children against sexual exploitation. From 2002 to 2005, the Council of Europe, through its 
Group of Specialists on the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation (PC-S-ES), undertook a range of speciﬁ c 
actions called for in the Budapest Commitment, which is the region-speciﬁ c action plan that was drawn up as part 
of the World Congress process. The ﬁ rst World Congress against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in 1996 
called for all countries to develop National Plans of Action (NPAs) against sexual abuse and exploitation of children 
and, in preparation of the second World Congress, regional action plans were drawn up too.

Not all countries of the EU have yet developed national plans. Many countries instead have integrated elements 
that would be included in an NPA into other work plans, and yet experience has shown how important NPAs are as 
rallying points for all the diﬀ erent sectors involved in the area of sexual abuse and exploitation of children. Consul-
tations organised to prepare an NPA can themselves bring diﬀ erent sectors together to debate and agree on ways 
forward and relative responsibilities, and are crucial to mapping out what needs to be done, what is already in place 
and how diﬀ erent sectors’ strengths can be harnessed to ﬁ ll in identiﬁ ed gaps. 

In addition to national plans, the Stockholm Agenda for Action also called on each country to nominate a ‘focal 
point’ on sexual abuse and exploitation. This recognised the fact that data, information, knowledge, experiences 
and actions need to pass through and be collected by some sort of ‘clearing house’, so that information is easily 
shared and accessible to all. Very few countries have done this. By the mid-term review of the Budapest under-
takings in 2005, only Hungary, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and Sweden had nominated ‘focal points’ 
although, in reality, many other countries have ministries or bureaux that fulﬁ l this role without speciﬁ cally carrying 
the title. A number of EU countries have also appointed Ombudsmen for Children, and the ombudsmen’s oﬃ  ces 
often act as focal points on child sexual abuse and exploitation.

Within  these  many  frameworks,  actions  to  protect  children  from  sexual  abuse  and  exploitation  have  multiplied 
since 1996. Since its ﬁ rst Call for Proposals in 1997, the European Commission’s Daphne Programme has supported 
a large number of protection projects.

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15

Experiences 
from the Daphne Programme

Since its inception, the Daphne Programme has attempted to be truly ‘European’. Projects supported by Daphne 
go beyond national borders and attempt to create new knowledge, form partnerships and networks, test method-
ologies and develop tools, and have a direct impact on children and young people on a European scale. Although 
many projects focus at ﬁ rst on two or three EU countries, all have the potential to be scaled up. Those running the 
projects are encouraged and helped to identify in their project activities and outcomes the potential they hold for 
the entire EU.

In the ﬁ eld of sexual abuse and exploitation of children, Daphne has supported research, studies and surveys that 
provide important insights into the nature and scope of the problem of sexual violence against children in Europe. 
As  early  as  1997,  Daphne  supported  a  research  project  on  sexual  violence  in  higher  education  institutes16. The 
National  Union  of  Students  in  Europe’s  study  documented  the  very  diﬀ erent  attitudes  of  male  and  female  stu-
dents towards sexual behaviour. What many of the male interviewees believed was “just fun” was in fact seen as 
threatening and inappropriate by the female students. The study called for raising more awareness and debate on 
the nature of appropriate/inappropriate sexual behaviour in tertiary educational institutions, and gave an outline 
policy paper on sexual harassment and violence in universities. This area of enquiry was quite new and opened up 
discussion on the issue of sexual violence in the much-neglected ‘adolescent/young adult’ age group.

Another important study17 took as its starting point the observation that, although there has been quite a lot of 
work done on vulnerability to violence itself, not enough work has been done on indicators of vulnerability (i.e. what 
makes one child a likely subject of violence as opposed to another, and how signs can be recognised by others). This 
Daphne project therefore aimed to study and identify vulnerability indicators in schoolchildren aged 6 to 13. Using 
this information, the project aimed to promote protection of children through their carers, by producing usable 
materials that would help such carers to understand and use vulnerability analysis. The project resulted in a short 
guide and general recommendations, translating the results of the research into practical tools. This ‘bridging’ of 
research and practical actions/tools is a hallmark of Daphne-supported actions.

A number of studies have focused on male violence and programmes to deal with this18. A comparative study of 
services in ﬁ ve countries, which deal with men who have been violent towards their domestic partners, found a 
very varied set of approaches and attempted to evaluate the most eﬀ ective. The project concluded that the trend 
towards ‘treatment’ of the violent man, alongside the woman and often children that he has victimised, does not 
take suﬃ  ciently into account the guilt and responsibility that the other family members often feel, which can lead 
to their looking upon themselves as ‘equally responsible’ for the violence. This is very often the case in domestic 
sexual abuse, and indeed is often used by abusers to encourage children and spouses to remain silent about the 
abuse. A second project built upon comparative analysis of the motivations of violent men in order to develop 
training modules for social services staﬀ , teachers and others who have a responsibility of care to children, young 
people and women. 

16. Daphne project 97-233-WC.
17. Daphne project 99-025-C.
18. For example Daphne project 98-211-W

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One important study looked at the eﬀ ectiveness of collecting and using personal information on child sex oﬀ end-
ers as a means of protecting children from possible re-oﬀ ences. The study concluded that at European level this 
could only be eﬀ ective if there was a harmonised system across Europe that allowed police forces in the various 
countries to share information and co-operate. At the time of the report, Europol had not yet become active in 
this area but subsequently such co-operation has been facilitated through Europol and sex oﬀ ender registers are 
becoming more common. It is important to remember, though, that this improves protection for children from 
those who already have convictions for child sex oﬀ ences; there is a need for continued vigilance given that many 
abusers never come to court.

A multi-country survey of the risks of violence children face in families where one or more of the parents has a men-
tal illness found that such families have “common, unmet needs across all EU Member States”19. Children in such 
families face a heightened risk of violence when the family’s needs are not identiﬁ ed, the risks acknowledged and 
support services provided. Often the silence that surrounds mental illness means that the family is left to cope on 
its own – services to this distinct group are regularly under-funded compared to other public healthcare. The con-
clusions of the project stressed the need for early intervention to support children in families facing the challenges 
of mental disability, and better training and preparation of those who are responsible for the children’s welfare.

The police, social workers and others with a duty of care were fully involved in the analysis undertaken by another 
Daphne project20 to map out the kinds of violence that occur within the home and family, and to propose ways to 
prevent it from occurring. The results emphasised again the need for better and ongoing training of all the various 
sectors that need to engage in preventing violence and protecting children from it, and underlined the advisability of 
forming multi-disciplinary teams at diﬀ erent levels to make sure that there is coordinated, comprehensive action.

A project run in Italy, Spain and Portugal in 2001 set out to document the situation of migrant children arriving 
in these countries who survive through casual or regular prostitution, or who are coerced into providing sex by 
others. The project21 was able to illustrate with speciﬁ c examples what had hitherto remained largely anecdotal: 
the  movement  of  children,  mostly  young  boys,  into  Italy  and  Spain  from  Morocco,  Albania,  Romania  and  Latin 
America for the purposes, primarily, of labour exploitation. Often the person who encourages the child to relocate 
is a family member and very often the child working on the streets – selling paper handkerchiefs to passing cars 
at traﬃ  c intersections, for example – is propositioned by men seeking sexual services. A follow-up project delved 
further into the mechanisms of relocating these children and recommended the kinds of services that should be in 
place to help them in the countries in which they end up. Other projects, which have studied the situation of ‘unac-
companied migrant minors’ on the streets of Europe and have mapped out the causes of social violence against 
migrant children22, have emphasised the need for common deﬁ nitions of ‘unaccompanied migrant minors’ across 
European legislations/policies, and the urgent necessity of aﬀ ording to these children the same rights and protec-
tions as indigenous children.

The reinforcing of the ability of diﬀ erent groups and individuals to contribute to protecting children from sexual 
(and indeed other forms of ) violence is an important outcome of many Daphne projects. Between 1997 and 2003, 
NGOs and other project organisers across Europe ran awareness-raising and education programmes23 targeting 
parents, the media, trade unions, teacher trainees, MEPs and other political players, and children and adolescents 
themselves. The aim of all these projects was to promote better understanding of the nature of violence against 
children but, more speciﬁ cally, the role that diﬀ erent parts of society play in protecting them from it. Some projects 
looked at these questions in relation to particular groups of vulnerable children – for example those living on the 
streets or Roma children24 – and some projects involved children themselves as the main implementers25. Many of 
the projects found that, although the sexual abuse and exploitation of children are topics regularly featured in the 
news, most people ﬁ nd these are diﬃ  cult subjects to discuss and think about. As a result, they often feel helpless 
and question whether they have a role to play in combating the problem. These projects were all able to emphasise 
that every member of society can contribute by taking the importance of protecting children seriously and ensur-
ing their well-being. An important starting point is listening to children and letting them know that they are being 
heard. Too often the perpetrators of sexual abuse and exploitation hide behind a wall of silence built of fear and 
isolation. Breaking down that wall is a vital step towards addressing the problems.

19. Daphne project 00-241-WC.
20. Daphne project 00-129-WC.
21. Daphne project 01-016-YC. Follow-up project: 02-188-Y.
22. Daphne projects 02-065-YC and 03-125-Y.
23. Daphne projects 98-065-C, 99-027-WC, 03-070-W, 03-126-W.
24. Daphne project 01-006-C.

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Other forms of action are also aimed to empower people across Europe to protect children from sexual and other 
forms of violence. These often focus on speciﬁ c groups of children who may be at particular risk or neglected in 
protection actions. They include girls (and women) with disabilities, children in residential institutions, adolescents 
in training institutes, those from socially disadvantaged groups and children with learning disabilities26. They also 
include children who are vulnerable because their family is breaking up, and unaccompanied minor migrants27. 
What  these  projects  all  stressed  is  the  importance  of  taking  into  account  the  speciﬁ c  needs  of  these  groups  of 
children and not “painting them all with the same broad brush”. The key to eﬀ ective action, they conclude, is in 
understanding the detail and programming responses that are custom-designed to deal with this diﬀ erence.

Among  other  direct  action  projects  in  the  ﬁ eld  of  protection  from  child  sexual  abuse  and  exploitation28,  the 
Daphne Programme has supported the creation of networks and exchange of experience, peer education proj-
ects,  the  development  of  training  and  educational  modules,  and  meetings  and  conferences  to  bring  together 
hundreds of individuals and groups to share the experiences of diﬀ erent Member States. These, too, have aimed 
to build up expertise in child protection but they have also aﬀ orded the opportunity to bring many groups out 
of the isolation in which they normally work so that they can both learn from and contribute to the work of other 
groups throughout Europe.

Across the board, the projects came to similar conclusions on the essential elements of protection of children from 
sexual abuse and exploitation: understanding the risks and levels of risk that diﬀ erent children face; empowering 
those in contact with children to identify these risks and to know how to respond to them; putting in place social 
and community services that can be mobilised to provide specialist support; and ensuring ongoing monitoring 
and  vigilance. The ‘trigger’  factors  that  are  often  involved  in  prompting  a  violent  act  are  also  extremely  impor-
tant. A project that was developing a European network of organisations involved in dealing with violence against 
children within the family setting29, for example, stressed the fact that, “in everyday life, psychological and sexual 
abuse are not the acts of a pathological violent personality but social phenomena existing in normal families under 
certain circumstances (such as economic crisis, excessive stress or ‘trigger’ events that destabilise the family)”. They 
gave the example of the birth of a child to the family, especially the ﬁ rst-born, which brings about a vast number of 
changes. These changes aﬀ ect the family’s ﬁ nancial situation and the couple’s relationship, and the time available 
in the day to accomplish daily tasks. Each family member has to redeﬁ ne and adapt her/his role to the new family 
structure. At the same time, parents rarely receive positive feedback for their parental duties and more often than 
not are picked out for their failures and shortcomings. This makes them insecure. And yet families render a good 
many services to society. The project suggested that the welfare state for its part should be made responsible for 
providing security and for giving individuals their place in the community; for example, for ensuring continued 
access to support systems such as social services, counselling and psychotherapy. 

In addition to the direct actions supported, the Daphne Programme has also supported a number of projects that 
set out to review the kinds of actions being undertaken in Europe with a view to identifying good (and bad) practice 
and recommending improvements30. One particularly important issue to be addressed here was the approaches 
that organisations and, indeed, social services, schools and others working with children take to ‘screening’. The 
alarm was raised that many organisations and bodies across Europe still do not systematically check those who 
come into contact with children for evidence of previous convictions for child sexual abuse or a history of violence. 
This is particularly true of those who volunteer their services and results not only from a lack of awareness of the 
potential risks but also from a reluctance to ‘check up’ on adults who seem to be operating from a desire to help.

Another  important  observation  was  that  many  programmes  and  projects  aimed  at  protecting  children  are  not 
adequately evaluated. Resources are used up and eﬀ orts misdirected in programmes that, in fact, have never been 
shown to be eﬀ ective. 

25. Daphne projects 97-132-C, 00-287-WC and 01-189-YC.
26. Daphne projects 97-182-WC, 98-028-C, 98-159-C and 01-074-WYC.
27. Daphne projects 01-159-YC and 01-161-YC.
28.  Daphne  projects  97-197-WC,  97-417-C,  98-130-WC,  98-146-WC,  98-249-C,  00-051-C,  01-111-C,  03-008-W,  03-175-W,  03-215-C,  04-2-007-YC  and 
04-1-061-WYC. In addition to these direct action projects, there have been several projects that have set out to develop ‘tools’ that can be used by those 
working to protect children from sexual abuse and exploitation. These include the development and testing of guidelines for media coverage of violence 
against children (99-101-C), a video resource pack on sexual violence (01-125-YC), a directory of organisations working in the ﬁ eld of disappearance and 
sexual exploitation of children (02-037-YC and follow-up). Disseminating and promoting wide use of these products is of course a key to ensuring that 
they are used and have a European impact.

29. Daphne project 01-111-C.
30. Daphne projects 97-028-C, 97-120-WC, 99-175-C, 00-309-C, 02-055-YC, 03-007-YC, 04-1-157-WYC and 04-2-003-YC.

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Ensuring that children are protected from sexual predators who use modern technological means to access chil-
dren has been a growing concern in Europe as more children have access to the Internet through computers (often 
not in the safety of their homes and schools but in Cyber cafes or indeed on laptops that can be moved from place 
to place) and across mobile telephone networks31. There is now an active and growing network of Internet Service 
Providers, national watchdogs, police forces and children’s organisations co-operating on these issues: the Inhope 
forum. This grew out of an early Daphne project32 that focused not only on creating the network but on exploring 
the sorts of issues that make cross-border co-operation challenging. Some of the challenges are obvious and relate 
to police jurisdiction versus the no-boundaries nature of the Internet, the technical and legal issues involved when 
an abuser is identiﬁ ed in Cyberspace, and the importance of making sure that the child being targeted is protected 
while action is taken. With the growth of mobile phone use in Europe, many of these issues have become even more 
complex. Children using mobile phones are invariably isolated from family and even friends while they are using 
the phone, and yet they can be linked to a world of people and resources through the on-line services the mobile 
phone companies provide. They can access pornography, dating sites and chat groups without anyone knowing 
they are doing this and, as technology advances, they can also be reached by those who have the technological 
know-how. Early attempts to protect children by installing GPS systems in their mobile phones so that parents can 
locate them easily, for example, have been questioned because potential abusers are also able to use these same 
systems to ﬁ nd out where children are. This is an area where much work remains to be done but where organisa-
tions in Europe are building expertise and learning some valuable lessons.

Among other outcomes from Daphne projects working in the area of on-line abuse, the series of projects run by the 
Copine Project of the University of Cork33, Ireland, has gained particular attention. The project made the important 
link between ‘unhealthy’ or compulsive downloading of child pornography from the Internet and the risk that the 
person concerned might move on to abuse a child. From this a cognitive behaviour therapy module was developed 
with adolescents who download images of child abuse, and an on-line resource was created to allow those who 
ﬁ nd themselves compulsively accessing child pornography to assess their behaviour and seek support. The CROGA 
website was subsequently evaluated and translation began to make it accessible to more users in Europe. These 
actions are particularly important in light of research that shows that more young people now ﬁ gure among those 
who download child pornography.

The Victim Identiﬁ cation Project (VIP)34 also broke new ground in protecting children from on-line sexual violence. 
VIP  was  an  innovative  and  unique  project  that  aimed  to  assess  the  process  of  identiﬁ cation  of  children  in  child 
pornographic images, and the issues that arise for the child in relation to the process of police investigation. It also 
surveyed existing systems of support and counselling. The project worked ﬁ rst with recent cases where children had 
been identiﬁ ed. This involved, as a preliminary task, mapping where such identiﬁ cation takes place – for example at 
desk oﬃ  cer level in a police unit, in which areas/countries/institutional units, and possibly by other agents. Clearly 
the co-operation of police forces in each partner country and at several diﬀ erent levels is vital; this was a major chal-
lenge in the ﬁ rst few months of the project. Relationship building and engagement of the police took longer than 
anticipated but was successful. In a follow-up project, VIP drew from the ﬁ ndings of the ﬁ rst two years to develop rec-
ommended guidelines and good practice before disseminating these to relevant professionals across Europe. The 
partners aimed to reach a number of key people in Europe who work in relevant ﬁ elds to share the ﬁ ndings of the 
research, and by doing this contribute to a greater understanding of child abuse images on the Internet, including 
a greater awareness of the diﬀ erent successful identiﬁ cation techniques and an understanding of the impact on the 
child from appearing on the Internet in such images. VIP was important in not only re-establishing a ‘victim focus’ to 
actions against child pornography on the Internet but also in making the important programmatic link between the 
images of abuse and the children who are being or have been abused, and who have a right to protection.

31.  A  number  of  early  Daphne  projects  also  developed  materials  for  parents  and  teachers  to  help  them  to  promote  safe  use  of  the  Internet  by 
children  (97-038-C,  01-097-C).  A  project  run  in  the  UK  and  Denmark  developed  an  on-line  resource  for  children:  http://www.chatdanger.com  and 
http://www.sikkerchat.dk

32. Daphne project 98-045-C. This project was led by Childnet International: www.childnet-int.org
33. Daphne projects 02-004-YC, 03-017-YC and 04-2-042-YC.
34. Daphne project 00-067-C. Follow-up project: 02-079-C..

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While the advances of technology pose ever-evolving challenges to child protection, ‘old technology’ continues to 
provide an important avenue for support to children at risk. Telephone helplines are not new in Europe. Successful 
services have existed in the United Kingdom, Italy and France (among others) for a number of years. There have 
been crucial moves in recent years, however, to deal with the reality of today’s Europe in which children move (and 
are moved) across the open borders of the EU and may ﬁ nd themselves in a country where they do not know how 
to access the help they need. A Europe-wide helpline number, and the connected/coordinated services to which it 
gives access, is a complex undertaking. It involves not only harmonised standards – of personnel training, systems 
and resources – but also eﬀ ective mechanisms to let children know that the line exists and how they can access it. 
In this area, Daphne has supported a number of projects that focused on understanding the issues involved and 
exploring ways to make a Europe-wide service possible35, and that has promoted the creation of new helpline ser-
vices (particularly in new Member States) that could learn from the experience of existing European helplines and 
be ready to join a Europe-wide service. Telephone helplines remain one of the most widely used avenues of support 
to children who need help.

Despite the lessons that have undoubtedly been learned since 1996, however, there are still gaps that need to be 
ﬁ lled and challenges that remain.

35. Daphne projects 97-011-WC, 97-021-C, 98-118-C and 04-1-070-YC

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Gaps and challenges

The overwhelming challenge in protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation remains the collection and 
analysis of data, not only on children who have already been victimised and who may need ongoing protection but 
also, importantly, on vulnerability patterns with a view to identifying children at high risk. 

Beyond just the collection of data, there is a need to ensure that data is collected and categorised in such a way that 
it allows trends to be identiﬁ ed. In short, data should be usable as a basis for understanding the issues better and 
acting more eﬀ ectively to protect children. At the very least this presupposes some agreement on working deﬁ ni-
tions and harmonised parameters for the data. Transposing these same deﬁ nitions and parameters into laws relat-
ing to sexual violence against children would also mean that children across the Member States of the EU receive 
equal protection under the law, regardless of where they live.

Despite enormous strides in law enforcement in Europe, there is still work to be done to help law enforcement 
oﬃ  cers to understand the gravity of the oﬀ ence of sexual exploitation of children. Too often, police are reported to 
turn a blind eye to under-age prostitution and to the men who, whatever their motive, purchase sex from minors. 
It is true that policing this area of exploitation is diﬃ  cult because the scope of the problem is signiﬁ cant and it is 
understandable that law enforcers may be reluctant to arrest every man they ﬁ nd soliciting young women or men 
in prostitution. However, the exploitation of minors for sex is a crime and should be treated as such if the message 
is going to be heard loud and clear that it has to stop.

Ongoing training of law enforcement personnel – not just the specialised forces dealing with sexual abuse and 
exploitation but across the board – is important. Government employees, teachers, medical staﬀ  and others who 
come into contact with children and have a duty of care to them also need to be targeted regularly with awareness-
raising actions, especially where there are regular staﬀ  rotations or changes. 

The same is true of the journalists and broadcasters who cover issues about children and who provide a vital link 
to the public. These are also areas where staﬀ  change and where knowledge is lost. Working through journalism 
schools,  training  institutions  and  umbrella  bodies  like  the  International  Federation  of  Journalists  is  one  way  to 
ensure that child rights issues are mainstreamed into media training,

Keeping those who inﬂ uence public opinion and understanding updated and informed is particularly important 
because of highly charged social attitudes to sexual abuse and exploitation of children. There is a great deal of fear 
that sexual predators are ‘lying in wait’ for children and that children should be locked away to be kept safe. To a 
large extent this results from a lack of understanding of the nature of sexual abuse, exploitation and paedophilia. 
As a result there are regular outcries about “paedophiles being let loose in the community” while much less atten-
tion is paid to the risk of sexual abuse and exploitation by non-paedophiles who have easy access to children.

One important lesson that has been learned in this regard is that broad-brush awareness campaigns do not help 
understanding. They may in fact create fear or conversely a false sense of security and do not lead to informed 

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21

protection actions. Targeted campaigns with clear messages are more likely to enhance the understanding of dif-
ferent groups of people who can act directly to protect children, including teachers, parents and of course children 
and young people themselves.

Protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation also needs to be accompanied by eﬀ ective prevention pro-
grammes. These target the oﬀ ence itself and those who perpetrate it. One worrying statistic in relation to this is 
that, in the decade since 1996, the average age of users of child pornography – that is, (usually) men who have an 
unhealthy sexual interest in children and who are at high risk of playing this out with a real child – has decreased 
from the mid-40s to the mid-20s. The reasons for this are not clear. It may be that social acceptance of early sexual 
activity has increased or that bringing the subject of child sexual abuse/exploitation into the open has increased 
tolerance or curiosity about it. Whatever the reason, there is clearly an urgent need for actions to stop oﬀ enders and 
those who fall into the category of potential oﬀ enders. Prevention is the ‘other side’ of protection: the former targets 
the oﬀ ender, the latter targets the child. Oﬀ ender treatment programmes include medical/therapeutic interven-
tions, proﬁ ling, education programmes – starting early in schools – and early intervention. Innovative programmes 
like the CROGA project, which give people an opportunity to seek help when they ﬁ nd themselves becoming inter-
ested in child pornography, are also important and should be tested.

There are still gaps in research and research is not necessarily equivalent across the Member States of the EU. There 
is  still  no  satisfactory  analysis  of  all  the  diﬀ erent  forms  of  motivation  that  comprise  so-called ‘demand’  for  child 
sex. There are gaps in the research and analysis of ‘markets’ for under-age prostitution, including in countries that 
receive traﬃ  cked minors. In general, much research has been done in recent years on the countries of origin of traf-
ﬁ cked children but much less on the so-called ‘receiving’ countries.

The mapping of vulnerability – that is, identifying those children who are most at risk of abuse and exploitation – 
allows programmes to be diverted to crisis areas. Protection actions need to be targeted as a priority to the most 
vulnerable groups of children: children from dysfunctional families, children with disability, minority ethnic groups, 
unaccompanied children and those who for whatever reason do not have access to regular care – for example, 
children living on the streets of Europe and those in institutions of various kinds.

Finally, there is a great deal of untapped potential in children and young people themselves. Much is said about 
‘child participation’ but much more can be done to recognise and exploit the unique understanding, access and 
energy of children and young people. They understand the daily realities of life for young people in Europe: their 
fragilities, their strengths, their attitudes to sex, relationships, strangers, risk and so forth. They are thus uniquely 
placed to help adults to design the kinds of programme that will protect children within the context of the realities 
of their lives. 

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22

Selected on-line resources

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

 The Daphne II and III Programme websites can be accessed through the European Commission EUROPA site:
Daphne II: http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/funding/2004_2007/daphne/funding_daphne_en.htm
Daphne III: http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/funding/daphne3/funding_daphne3_en.htm

 The Daphne Toolkit, which includes descriptions, lessons and comments on all completed Daphne projects as 
well as useful links, ‘tools and tips’ and multimedia materials from the projects, is at www.daphne-toolkit.org 
(Please note that the toolkit will be under reconstruction in 2007, resulting in a new address to which a link will 
be provided on the Daphne Programme website. The Daphne toolkit is currently only fully operational in Eng-
lish but will gradually be updated in other languages).

 The European Commission (DG INFSO) initiative to contribute to protecting children from on-line abuse through 
promotion of safe use of the Internet – ‘Safer Internet plus’ can be accessed through the European Commission 
site: http://www.europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/sip/programme/index_en.htm

 Materials from the ﬁ rst and second World Congresses against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, as 
well as documents from the regional consultations held to monitor progress against regional commitments, are 
archived at www.csecworldcongress.org

 The  United  Nations  Secretary-General’s  Study  on  Violence  against  Children  website  includes,  among  other 
documents  and  information,  copies  of  the  completed  questionnaires  received  from  governments  around 
the  world  reporting  on  the  status  of  violence,  including  sexual  violence,  against  children  in  their  countries: 
www.violencestudy.org 

 The website of the Council of Europe’s three-year programme ‘Building a Europe for and with children’ can be 
consulted at www.coe.int/T/TransversalProjects/Children/default_EN.asp The REACT tool, developed by the 
Council of Europe’s Group of Specialists, containing summary details of progress reported by countries against 
a number of international and regional commitments on the sexual abuse and exploitation of children, is at 
www.coe.int/childprotection/

 The ECPAT website contains, in addition to information on the organisation and its activities, the annual report that 
ECPAT produces on the Stockholm Agenda for Action and the Yokohama Global Commitment: www.ecpat.net

 The European Federation for Missing and Sexually Exploited Children, led by the Belgian NGO Child Focus, has 
a website at www.childfocus.org 

 A  number  of  NGOs  in  Europe  have  worked  together  since  the  late  1980s  as  members  of  the  NGO  Group 
for  the  Convention  on  the  Rights  of  the  Child.  This  group  has  a  sub-group  working  to  exchange  informa-
tion and promote co-operation on the issue of child sexual abuse and exploitation. Some members include 

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23

 
the  International  Save  the  Children  Alliance:  www.savethechildren.net  and  World  Vision  International: 
www.worldvision.org The NGO Group has a focal point programme on sexual exploitation, abuse and violence 
(FPP) that facilitates the coordination of global action to combat child sexual abuse, exploitation and violence. 
More information is available from the Child Rights Information Network: www.crin.org/NGOGroupforCRC

 Other active groups in Europe include the NGO coalition Euronet: www.europeanchildrensnetwork.org and 
the Child Rights Information Network, CRIN: www.crin.org, which has a thematic ‘desk’ on sexual exploitation.

 Among the United Nations agencies working in the general ﬁ eld of sexual violence against children, UNICEF 
focuses particularly on sexual abuse and exploitation, including traﬃ  cking, as part of its work in the area of child 
protection: www.unicef.org 

 The World Health Organisation has a dedicated programme on violence prevention and has focused at a num-
ber of levels on the prevention and health impacts of sexual violence on children: www.who.org

 The  actions  of  the  United  Nations  Special  Rapporteur  on  the  Sale  of  Children,  Child  Prostitution  and  Child 
Pornography  are  administered  through  the  Oﬃ  ce  of  the  United  Nations  High  Commissioner  for  Human 
Rights. The  Special  Rapporteur  submits  an  annual  report  to  the  UN  General  Assembly:  www.ohchr.org  and 
www.un.org 

• 

• 

• 

• 

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24

Selected bibliography

BICE 

ECPAT 

 The sexual exploitation of children: Field responses, 
International Catholic Child Bureau, Geneva 1991.

 Enforcing the law against the commercial sexual exploitation of children, 
ECPAT, Bangkok 1996.

Education Development Centre 

 Child sexual exploitation: Improving investigations and protecting victims, 
US Department of Justice, Washington 1995.

European Commission 

The Daphne Experience 1997-2003, EC, Brussels 2006.

Holman, K. 

Child sexual abuse – Prevention programmes, Save the Children, London 2000.

Kane, J. 

Kane, J. 

Kane, J. 

Chasse à l’enfant, Editions Ramsay, Paris 1997.

Sold for Sex, Arena, London, 1998.

 Unbearable to the human heart: Child traﬃ  cking and action to eliminate it, 
ILO-IPEC, Geneva 2002.

Muntarbhorn, V. 

 Extraterritorial criminal laws against child sexual exploitation, 
UNICEF, Geneva 1998.

O’Connell Davidson, J. 

The Sex Exploiter, ECPAT, 1996.

Palmer, T. 

No son of mine! Children abused through prostitution, Barnardos, London 2001.

Thomas, T., Katz, I. and Wattam, C. 

 CUPICSO: The collection and use of personal information on child sex oﬀ enders, 
NSPCC, London 1998.

UN 

 Violence against children in Europe and Central Asia: The problem, actions taken 
and challenges outstanding, July 2006, at www.violencestudy.org

Varea, J. and Goicoechea, P. 

 A good practice experience on child sexual abuse: Advocacy, network and training, 
Save the Children Spain, 2005.

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Daphne-supported projects 
in the area of sexual abuse and 
exploitation of children (prevention)

Laws and law enforcement
97-012-C 
97-013-C 

Comparative legal review in the ﬁ eld of missing and sexually exploited minors
The collection and use of personal information on child sex oﬀ enders (CUPISCO)

Scope and nature of sexual violence
Conference and research on sexual violence in higher education institutes
97-233-WC 
Violent men involved in domestic and sexual violence
98-211-W 
99-025-C 
Vulnerability study as a basis for prevention of violence
00-241-WC  Mapping of types of violence in families with parental mental illness
00-129-WC 
01-016-YC 
02-188-Y 
02-065-YC 
03-125-Y 

Analysis of violence in the family
KIRIADE – The exploitation of under-age migrants
Investigating continuous and occasional prostitution of minors and young foreign adults
The causes of social violence against migrant children
Unaccompanied minor migrants on the streets of Europe

Awareness raising and education
97-132-C 
98-065-C 
99-027-WC 

Young people’s campaign on commercial sexual exploitation of children
Raising the awareness of parents on child abuse
 Awareness  raising  among  the  media,  trade  unions,  MEPs  and  political  players  on  issues  related 
to violence against women and children
ATAV – Action Teenagers against Violence
CIRCE – Coalition for Integration of Roma Children in Europe
 Understanding  and  preventing  violence  and  child  abuse  through  education  and  an  awareness 
campaign involving children
Radio series to raise understanding of violence against women and children

Prevention of sexual violence against disabled girls and women
Networks and exchange for the prevention of violence against women and children
Innovative actions to prevent violence in educational centres
Combating and preventing sexual abuse of young people in residential institutions
Preventing alcohol-related violence
Primary prevention of sexual violence by 12-16 year-old male students
Preventing sexual violence against adolescents and women in training and education
Capacity building for teachers, social workers and parents to protect children against sexual abuse
Training of trainers to prevent violence against children from socially disadvantaged groups
 QUATRE ATOUTS – Establishing a European network for inter-disciplinary training and participation 
in the ﬁ eld of violence prevention
 User-led training project to protect children, young people and women with learning disabilities 
from sexual abuse

00-287-WC 
01-006-C 
01-189-YC 

03-070-W 

Direct action
97-182-WC 
97-197-WC 
97-417-C 
98-028-C 
98-130-WC 
98-146-WC 
98-159-C 
98-249-C 
99-035-C 
00-051-C 

01-074-WYC 

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26

01-111-C 
01-159-YC 
01-161-YC 

Transnational support programme to prevent violence and abuse of children in families
ANCORA MATILDE – programmes to protect children at times of family break-up
 Transnational exchange of experiences and further development of protection measures for the risk 
group of unaccompanied minor migrants
Development of a user-led pilot sex education/peer education project
Increasing teacher trainees’ awareness of sexualised and gendered violence
Multidisciplinary network to tackle violence against women and children
Empowering disability organisations to develop prevention strategies

03-008-W 
03-126-W 
03-175-W 
03-215-C 
04-2-007-YC  Non-formal education and teacher networks to support children on the streets of Poland
04-1-061-WYC   Safeguarding  people  with  learning  disabilities  against  sexual  violence,  with  particular  reference 

to the experiences of families

Vision and reality: promoting good practice in the EU in the ﬁ eld of child sexual abuse

Identiﬁ cation of good practice
97-028-C 
97-120-WC  Means to measure the eﬀ ectiveness of experiences in preventing violence
99-175-C 
00-309-C 

Evaluation of prevention tools and methodologies for the prevention of sexual abuse
 PROTINTER II – pilot project for the integration of services in child protection systems in the coun-
tries of the European Union
What works in child sexual exploitation
 Comparison of models of integrated risk assessment with a view to reducing recidivism by better 
risk assessment of young sex oﬀ enders

02-055-YC 
03-007-YC 

04-1-157-WYC   Models  of  co-operation  among  women’s  NGOs  and  state  authorities  to  prevent  violence  against 

women and children

04-2-003-YC  Good practice in the new Member States: exchange and networking

Tools
Development and testing of guidelines for media coverage of violence
99-101-C 
Believe Me – a video resource pack on sexual violence against children
01-125-YC 
Directory of organisations working in the ﬁ eld of disappearance and sexual exploitation of children
02-037-YC 
03-108-W 
Europe-wide training courses on violence-conditioned symptoms
04-2-008-YC  Dissemination of the SCEP Statement of Good Practice to prevent sexual abuse

Protection from on-line abuse
97-038-C 
98-045-C 
01-097-C 

Internet action: making the Internet a safer place for children
Combating child pornography on the Internet
 Child  pornography  on  the  Internet:  evaluating  preventive  measures  in  order  to  improve  their 
eﬀ ectiveness in the EU Member States
Child pornographic images on the Internet: the VIP project
 Development  of  a  tele-health  resource  to  support  young  people  and  adults  who  compulsively 
access Internet child pornography
Child pornographic images on the Internet: the VIP project (guidelines and good practice)
 Evaluation of a cognitive behaviour therapy module with adolescents who sexually oﬀ end through 
downloading child abuse images
Child protection in interactive Net services
 Pro-active intervention with people who victimise through Internet child pornography: dissemina-
tion of the CROGA website

00-067-C 
02-004-YC 

02-079-C 
03-017-YC 

03-104-YC 
04-2-042-YC 

Telephone helplines
97-011-WC 
97-021-C 
98-118-C 
04-1-070-YC 

Promoting co-operation among telephone helplines for children and young people
Establishing a European network of helplines for the prevention of child abuse
Managing emergency situations concerning children and young people
24-hour children’s helpline for abused and missing children

Note: Full details of these projects and the organisations involved are available from the on-line resource: www.daphne-toolkit.org Projects supported 
through the 2005 Call for Proposals (05-) run through 2006 and complete reporting in 2007. They are outlined in the Daphne Toolkit project listing.

27

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