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  1. How We Can Help
  2. I am a young person

Questions

Who will know? 

The professionals who you are talking to will not tell anyone any details about what has happened to you if they are not involved.  Even then, they will not share everything, as they will treat conversations with you as confidential. Your parents/carers will know some of the details but there may be some things you tell professionals that will not be shared with them. The pictures or video recording of you will never be shown to your parents/carers by the police.  

What happens if other people have got pictures of me?  

If you know of anyone else who may have copies of the pictures or videos of you then you can either tell your parents/carer, teacher, police officer or support worker if you have one. Basically, any adult you trust. They should not have any images of you as this is a criminal offence. 

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What will happen to the pictures or videos of me?

What will happen to the pictures or videos of me?

The police will treat these images with respect and never share them with teachers, parents, cares, social workers, etc.…  

The images will be hashed – a process which reduces them to a unique digital fingerprint used by tech companies and police all over the world – they can be blocked and removed rapidly, whenever or wherever criminals may attempt to share them. 

The hashed images will be uploaded to a national database, but your personal details will never be stored alongside them. Your images in the database will be marked up to say the child in the image has been identified and safeguarded. Any images on your device will be fully deleted from it and any storage cloud back-up, so police will need to access your cloud storage to allow this to happen. A refusal to cooperate in this will likely result in a factory re-set of your device, which could mean you could lose everything stored on it! 

Will anyone else see the pictures?

When an image has been shared online, we can never be sure where they are.  But there are steps we can take to try and find and delete them.   

The police will upload images into a child abuse image database and these images will be given a specific ‘hash’ (code made up of random letters and numbers unique to that image) that enables organisations to search the internet for the same hash. Any found get blocked and steps are taken to get it removed from the internet. There is a similar option called Report Remove that enables you if you have a copy of your intimate image to get it coded and added to the searches that are made.  

Only a small number of people will see the image as part of the investigation for example the specialist police officer or the Crown Prosecution Service. There is no reason for anyone else to see.  

Some images may have been created using Artificial Intelligence (AI) which is still illegal in the UK.  If you are aware that anyone, regardless of age, has a copy, fake or real intimate image of a child, that needs reporting to the police.  

Will anyone else see the pictures?
Will I get into trouble?

Will I get into trouble?

No. If you are a victim of a crime then the police will want to make sure you are safe and supported. In some cases, the police may record you as a subject rather than a victim as there is an old law that makes it illegal to share an intimate image of a person under 18, even if that image is taken by the person. But the police recognise that a lot of people don’t know about this law and therefore will often see if there are any support services that can explain it to you.  

If you have been persuaded, threatened or tricked into sending an image then the other person has broken the law. You should be seen as and very much treated as a victim. If you are feeling like you are being treated as a suspect or blamed in any way, raise this with someone, other than the person making you feel this way if that makes you feel uncomfortable. The person you tell can then address this.  

Your parents/carer may be who you are worried about, but that is because they are angry that someone has upset or harmed you. Most parents’ main concern is that you are okay. They will be initially upset and probably show some of the same negative emotions you may be feeling because they are upset about you being harmed.  

Some people say it was my fault

This is often called victim blaming and it is where people don’t understand what has happened or how it has happened. This can make you feel as if it was your fault that it happened in the first place, so you say nothing.  It is never your fault.  There are a number of reasons why people will blame victims. The most common reason is that it helps them think it couldn’t happen to them, when it could!  

Wishing you had never met the person is common as their actions have caused you harm. You are not responsible for their actions, if they hadn’t done what they did you would not have been harmed by them which is another way of saying they are the one who needs blaming.   

Professionals should not use victim blaming language and if they do you can complain or tell you parents/carers who can intervene on your behalf. 

Click here to find links to support organisations
Some people say it was my fault

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