Children’s experience of surviving the web of exploitation

Perpetrators are frequently offering children monetary resources to self-produce child sexual exploitation material (CSEM). There has been little exploration of how victim children make sense of this form of exploitation, which is frequently facilitated by technology. This study explored how Australian children interpreted their lived experience of being given commodified resources in exchange for their CSEM. Five children aged 16 and 17 who had lived in out-of-home care 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. 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 about their conceptualisation of agency, control, choice and coercion. The findings are discussed in terms of how children escaped exploitation, the collapse of the online/offline dichotomy, and children's experience of the co-existence of coercion and agency. The paper provides novel insight into how vulnerable children can be better supported when financially coerced to self-produce CSEM.