Genevieve Bloxsom

Objectives: This study explores how Australian children interpreted their lived experience of being given commodified resources in exchange for their child sexual exploitation material (CSEM).

Methods: Five children aged 16 and 17 who lived in out-of-home care in Queensland and had been financially coerced into "self-producing" CSEM engaged in one-hour semi-structured interviews. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was utilised to understand this form of exploitation from the perspective of children who had experienced it.

Results: Findings pointed to a "Web of Exploitation" that children were required to navigate. Six themes were generated, and presented in chronological terms as per children's experiences: (1) Stepping into the Web exhausted and desperate; (2) Assessing who is using whom; (3) Feeling like a willing participant; (4) Surviving and navigating the Web; (5) Risking escape; and (6) Looking back at the Web. Children's resistance to exploitation was frequently observed, and tensions arose for children regarding their conceptualisation of agency, control, choice and coercion.
Conclusions: This presentation provides novel insight into how vulnerable children can be better supported by multi-agency responses when financially coerced to "self-produce" CSEM.

Key learnings:
1) Children who are bribed to provide their CSEM operate within a survivalist mindset and often conduct their own risk assessments and safety plans.
2) Children who try escape the exploitation and resist further exploitation enter a high-risk period. Perpetrators were known to leak children's CSEM, kidnap children and sexually assault children to maintain control.
3) Multi-agency CSE disruption which involves threatening victims with prosecution, technology confiscation or shaming victims can cause victims to conceal further exploitation and attempt to resolve the exploitation on their own. There are missed opportunities to collaborate with victims and leverage off their insight, during multi-agency CSE disruption.