In a record-breaking gathering, over 1,100 participants tuned in to Michael Seto’s webinar, “What You Need to Know About Online Sexual Offending.” The event sparked a lively exchange of ideas, with attendees eager to pose their questions. While time constraints prevented us from addressing every query during the session, Seto has generously taken the time to answer some of the additional questions below. Explore his insights and gain a deeper understanding of this important topic.

Missed the live webinar? You can access the recording through the On-Demand Webinar Library

1. If someone constantly views legal adult pornography and then over time they seek out more extreme material and end up looking at child porn, do we have to conclude that they have deviant sexual interest in children? Or is it something else?

In both the DSM-5-TR and ICD-11, the two major diagnostic systems used in the world, pedophilic disorder is a possible diagnosis if someone shows persistent, recurrent evidence of sexual interest in children, as indicated by thoughts, urges, sexual arousal, and/or behavior, and experiences significant distress or impairment as a result. These criteria are agnostic about how someone developed or came to showing sexual interest in children. It could have been something they discover about themselves as they go through puberty, as I suggest in my work on pedophilia, but it could also be the result of an escalation process from viewing legal adult pornography to more extreme content and then CSEM. As in any case, the decision needs to be based on multiple sources of information, including self-report, objective assessment data if available, and consideration of behavior such as pornography use, adult relationships, and so on.

2. What are your thoughts on individuals with Autism viewing CSAM online?

I have heard repeated anecdotes about a higher than expected prevalence of autism among CSEM perpetrators, but there still hasn’t been systematic research on this. So I don’t know if this is a real correlation or not, and if it is real, why it might be so.

3. Are there any identified protective factors for CSEM-only offenders?

I recent led a systematic review of dynamic risk and protective factors for sexual offending. It was not specific to CSEM offending, or CSEM-exclusive offending, but I suspect the findings are still relevant. In that review, the only protective factor that we felt confident about was positive social support, which can come in the form of a committed, long-term relationship, positive connections with prosocial family members and friends, and community ties such as church or social organizations. Ironically, punitive and/or restrictive policies such as sexual offense registration and community notification can have negative impacts on positive social support.

4. What resources are available for law enforcement to remove images of a child who has been exploited online?

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a service that can issue takedown orders to websites to remove images of sexually exploited children. Similarly, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection has a webcrawler that automatically scours the Internet and issues take down orders to websites for known CSEM. Unfortunately, some websites will not comply or are not in jurisdiction, and the pernicious reality of the Internet is that digital content can be replicated indefinitely. 

5. What do you think is the cause of the high 44% perpetration rate amongst minors against other minors online? What are potential solutions?

In our research on minor perpetration, two powerful risk factors were attitudes and perceived social norms. Youth engage in behaviors such as nonconsensual sharing of intimate images in part because they don’t think it is a serious, harmful behavior and because they think it is common among their peers. I believe the most potent solution is targeted social marketing to address these attitudes and norms. We have been successful in the past in targeting behaviors such as driving under the influence and tobacco use, and we can be successful again. I also talked in the webinar about the prevalence of perpetration by partners or ex-partners, and thus a connection between peer perpetration with coercive control and possibly intimate partner violence. Something else that is relevant here is the proportion of perpetration that is an expressing of bullying and harassment, which also need to be addressed.

6. I hear your point on CSEM and risk of reoffending. However, what about the literature suggesting that a high percentage of people with CSEM offenses having an undetected hands-on offenses?

In our review, about half of CSEM perpetrators have committed undetected contact sexual offenses. So that is clearly relevant to thinking about risk management and intervention. But what we don’t always consider is that some proportion of contact perpetrators have also committed undetected contact offenses (and likely undetected CSEM offenses as well). We have to act based on what we know, so we assess contact perpetrators using a validated tool such as the Static-99R, knowing that they may have undetected sexual offenses that don’t factor into the risk assessment. Similarly, we can assess CSEM perpetrators using a tool such as the CPORT, again recognizing some of them have committed undetected sexual offenses.

7. What advances do you see happening in the future with the CPORT and CASIC? Do you foresee an adolescent version?

I can tell you about some of our current research studies, which indicates where we are going in terms of research with the CPORT and CASIC tools. The first study will combine outcome data across CPORT studies to see if it is possible to develop norms that would anchor recidivism predictions. The second study will look at the effects of considering clinical data in addition to police data in scoring the CPORT and CASIC. The third study looks at whether the CASIC might be useful as a stand-alone tool for assessing sexual interest in children among individuals convicted of CSEM offenses. It will take some time, but I am also interested in how the CPORT and CASIC perform for women and for adolescents who commit CSEM offenses.

8. Does the new edition of your book address typologies? Most of the interest is the CSEM use connected to the individual’s own previous sexual victimization/ trauma?

Online Sexual Offending: Theory, Practice, and Policy, Second Edition by Michael C. Seto

I discuss motivational pathways in depth in my book, which indirectly at least then speaks to types of offending. At least a plurality of CSEM offending is simply explained as an expression of sexual attraction to children, such as pedophilia (attraction to prepubescent children) or hebephilia (pubescent children). But some individuals appear to engage with CSEM after a progressive pattern of pornography use, from typical adult pornography to unusual adult pornography to taboo/illegal content and then CSEM. A third group encounters CSEM opportunistically or even accidentally. I’m also interested in combinations of offending, such as CSEM plus contact or CSEM plus solicitation.

9. Will your book discuss the relationship between CSAM and hands-on offending? In what ways does each signal risk for further offending? What are your overall thoughts on this?

Online Sexual Offending: Theory, Practice, and Policy, Second Edition by Michael C. Seto

I write a lot about the connections between CSAM and contact offending because it is a major preoccupation in terms of policy and practice. As I discussed in the webinar, the sexual recidivism rates are not consistent with the gateway hypothesis, that CSEM offending is a gateway to contact offending, and if CSEM perpetrators sexually reoffend, they are more likely to commit another CSEM offense than a new contact offense. I interpret these results in terms of the motivation-facilitation model of sexual offending. CSEM offending is often – but not always – motivated by a sexual attraction to prepubescent or pubescent children, and this same motivation underlies a substantial proportion of contact offending as well. The difference is on the facilitation side: Study after study finds that CSEM perpetrators are lower on measures of antisocial personality, criminal history, offense-supportive attitudes, and so on than contact perpetrators.

10. What are your thoughts on loli and shota? (Genres of animated pornography in which the characters depicted are typically prepubescent children engaged in sexual situations)

I have spoken publicly and written about the significance of CSEM content that does not depict real children, which could include drawings, anime or manga, and text stories. My best guess is that this kind of content could have both positive and negative effects. A positive effect would be consistent with the idea of harm reduction in substance use interventions. Someone who is sexually attracted to children might obtain sexual gratification from content that does not depict real children – or from child sex dolls, so no real children are harmed – and might reduce their risk of CSEM or contact offending. Others might aggravate their risk by consuming this content. I don’t know if we will ever figure this out because there is such a strong emotional reaction to the idea of CSEM that does not depict real children or child sex dolls.