Child sexual abuse in NI: Have crimes involving images of abuse almost doubled in five years?

• Official figures from the PSNI indicate that offences involving images of child sexual abuse have nearly doubled over five years.
• However, data accompanying the latest annual crime report states there were 845 such crimes in 2023-24, not 859.
• NSPCC research indicates that 50% of these crimes involve Snapchat and a further 25% use Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp.
• The PSNI told FaceCheckNI that details about any online platforms used in crimes may be recorded “within the range of reports that are contained in each police record” in certain circumstances, such as when it is relevant to individual cases – but that this information is not held in a way that allows for easy statistical analysis.

During a Member’s Statement in the Assembly on 25 February, DUP MLA Jonathan Buckley claimed:

“Crimes involving images of child sexual abuse have almost doubled in the past five years in Northern Ireland, with a staggering 98% increase. In the past year, offences have risen by 24%, with 859 cases being recorded by the PSNI in 2023-24. That means that, in the past five years, there have been 3,382 recorded crimes, each involving an individual child who has been robbed of basic human dignity … across the UK, half of those offences occur on Snapchat and a quarter on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, yet, in Northern Ireland, the PSNI does not even record which platform is being used. How can we fight that epidemic when we are not even gathering the full picture of the scale of the crime? How can we tackle this horror if we do not have the data, the strategy or the will to take decisive action?”

This claim has three separate aspects:

1. Crimes involving images of child sexual abuse in NI have almost doubled in the past five years, with a rise of 98% to a total of 859 offences.
2. Across the UK, half such crimes occur on Snapchat with a further quarter on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.
3. Here in NI, the PSNI keeps no record of which platform is used in specific crimes.

The first of these is more or less supported by evidence. Figures included with the PSNI’s latest annual report on police recorded crimes state that there were 433 such offences in 2018-19, rising to 845 in 2023-24 – and not 859, as stated in the claim.

However, this represents an increase of 95.2%, supporting the claim that these crimes have almost doubled in that period. Our rating: ACCURATE WITH CONSIDERATION.

The second is based on research from the NSPCC. The organisation contacted all 43 police forces in the UK and asked them for relevant figures, with 20 forces responding with “usable information”. The figures quoted emerged from that data. Rating: ACCURATE WITH CONSIDERATION.

The PSNI was not one of the police forces to provide usable data to NSPCC. In a statement to FactCheckNI, the PSNI said information about specific platforms “may be recorded within the range of reports that are contained in each police record, for example where this information is pertinent to any investigation” but that platform details are not required by them “for the purposes of compiling the police recorded crime data series” so there was no way for them to respond “appropriately” to the NSPCC’s request.

Therefore, while it is not correct to suggest that the PSNI keeps no record of platforms used in specific crimes, this information is not held in such a way that allows for straightforward statistical analysis. RATING: INACCURATE WITH CONSIDERATION.

• Source

FactCheckNI contacted Mr Buckley about this claim. His office replied to say that the figures were sourced from an 18 February article in the Belfast Telegraph.

That article quoted figures provided from the NSPCC, and said:

“The NSPCC has revealed that crimes involving images of child sexual abuse reported to the PSNI have risen by almost a quarter (24%) in the last 12 months and almost doubled over the last five years (98%).

“In 2023/24, there were 859 offences recorded, compared to 434 in 2018/19, with the total number of recorded child sexual abuse material crimes over this period being 3,382…

“Separate statistics obtained by the NSPCC showed that in England, Scotland and Wales exactly half (50%) of crimes took place on Snapchat and a quarter on Meta products — 11% on Instagram, 7% on Facebook and 6% on WhatsApp.

“This stat is likely to be similar in Northern Ireland although the PSNI doesn’t record what platforms the crimes took place on.”

The bits we have in bold here show that all of Mr Buckley’s claims can be found in this report.

• NSPCC

FactCheckNI contacted the NSPCC to ask about their figures. They sent us a copy of a press release (that isn’t online) from 18 February including all of the figures in the first three paragraphs quoted from the Belfast Telegraph article above.

However, the press release did not claim that the PSNI keeps no record of the specific platforms on which these sorts of crimes take place. Instead, the NSPCC told us: 

“The NSPCC NI Press release stated that social media data/site information was not available for Northern Ireland. It did not say that the PSNI keeps no record of which platform is being used (That statement was made by the Belfast Telegraph in said article).”

• Official figures

The PSNI’s latest annual figures for recorded crimes cover 2023-24 and were published in November.

This data includes a record of the total number of offences relating to obscene publications and/or protected sexual material offences. These are split into two categories: offences relating to children, and all other offences.

According to a footnote in the statistical tables, the former includes “offences relating to taking, permitting to be taken, making, copying, distributing, possessing or publishing advertising relating to indecent photograph or pseudo photograph of a child.”

Relevant figures for the most recent year and each of the five years prior are in the following table:

Figure 1 – source: PSNI

These are slightly different from the figures quoted by the NSPCC (which are the same as those in the Belfast Telegraph article and in the statement by Mr Buckley).

NSPCC said that the PSNI informed them there were 859 offences in 2023-24, compared with 434 in 2018-19, which equates to a 98% increase.

However, the table above indicates that 859 is the number of obscene publication offences in total, which includes 14 which did not involve children, and that the actual figure for 2023-24 is 845.

There is also a small deviation in the figure for 2018-19: the NSPCC provided a figure of 434 offences when the data table says 433.

We asked the PSNI about the discrepancy between the figures in their data tables and those in the NSPCC press release – with police confirming that the figures in their tables are correct.

According to the figures in the official data tables, between 2018-19 and 2023-24 the number of crimes involving images of child sexual abuse increased from 433 to 845, a rise of 95.2% – so, while there may be some deviation between the figures NSPCC claim that they received from the PSNI and those contained in the annual figures, those differences are small and it still remains the case that the number of such crimes almost doubled over that period.

That means the first part of this claim, while not entirely spot on, is still more or less accurate according to evidence.

• Where do these crimes take place?

The claim that 50% of these crimes occur on Snapchat and another 25% take place on Instagram, Facebook or WhatsApp (all of which are owned by Meta) is based on research by the NSPCC.

The children’s charity told us that these figures were based on a series of Freedom of Information requests sent to police forces across the UK. The organisation received “usable data” from 20 of the 43 different forces, and the findings are based on that. According to the NSPCC:

• Police disclosed the platform involved in 7,338 instances. Social media data/site information was not available for Northern Ireland.
• Of these Snapchat was flagged 3648 times (50%), Instagram 840 (11%), Facebook 537 (7%) and WhatsApp 457 times (6%). Other notable platforms included Kik 124 (2%), TikTok 245 (3%), Twitter/X 250 (3%) and YouTube 330 (4%).
• Many police forces have previously refused to share information about the social media sites used in child abuse image offences on time and cost grounds. Therefore, the data this year is based on a key word search provided by the NSPCC and does not cover every method used in child abuse image offences. We asked police forces to search for instances where the following were used: Snapchat, Facebook/Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, X/Twitter, Kik, TikTok, YouTube, Discord, Skype, Facetime, Roblox, Oculus, VR, Metaverse, Only Fans, Signal, iCloud, iMessage, Dropbox, Mega, Patreon. Social media data/site information was not available for Northern Ireland.

A summary of the findings of this research was posted online by the charity.

In terms of the claim, this is based on a study by the NSPCC (and the organisation has revealed both their methodology and findings) which provides evidence to support the claim.

• PSNI record keeping

FactCheckNI contacted the PSNI on 12 March to ask for clarification on the small differences between the two sets of figures above (those in their data tables, and those the NSPCC said were provided to them by the police).

We also asked whether they keep a record of the platform on which offences involving child abuse images take place.

Regarding the statistics, the PSNI said:

The figures are from table 7.4 in the spreadsheet accompanying the police recorded crime annual trends bulletin 1998/99 to 2023/24:

• The figure of 859 is total obscene publications, with 845 offences relating to children.
• Revisions to figures take place on annual basis, the figure of 434 for 2018/19 was originally published in the annual trends report to 2018/19 but was subsequently revised to 433 in the 2021/22 report; the figure of 433 offences relating to children in 2018/19 has been published in each report since 2021/22.

Their response to our query about whether they record details about specific platforms used in online crimes – noting that they had not provided “usable data” to NSPCC, following the charity’s request – was:

“Details of the platforms on which offences take place may be recorded within the range of reports that are contained in each police record, for example where this information is pertinent to any investigation.

“However this information is not required for the purposes of compiling the police recorded crime data series and it is not held in a way that allows it to be appropriately identified for the purposes of answering queries of this nature.”

FactCheckNI noted that platform details “may” be recorded in reports “for example where this information is pertinent to any investigation”, and asked whether this means information is not necessarily recorded routinely. The PSNI suggested that “as the platform names aren’t required for stats purposes, they aren’t recorded in a way that is easily retrievable when someone asks for figures.”