Final closing date for receipt of materials: 8th September 2017

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has commissioned the Secure Societies Institute at the University of Huddersfield to undertake a rapid evidence assessment of academic and unpublished (grey) literature, and of the available data sources.

This is an evolving area of research and IICSA wish to obtain the most up to date data that can contribute to quantifying the extent of online-facilitated child sexual abuse (CSA) in all its forms , including child sexual exploitation (CSE).

The findings will provide direction to further research and IICSA investigations, as well as potentially informing policy and practice recommendations.

Areas of particular interest to us include:

●  domestic and transnational online CSA / CSE (where either the victim or perpetrator is based in England or Wales)

●  indicators of prevalence and/or perpetration

●  indicators of prevalence and/or incidence of victimisation

●  the scale of the production of inappropriate images of children, whether these are solicited from victims or adult produced

●  the extent and reach of image sharing and distribution between offenders

●  the rate of accessing or viewing of images

●  the extent of online/ technology facilitated grooming and solicitation of children and young people

How your materials will be used

All materials received as part of this request for literature will be available in full to both IICSA and University of Huddersfield. All submissions which meet thresholds for quality assurance and relevance to the research questions will be synthesised into a final report, which will be published in due course. Any literature used in the final report will be appropriately referenced.

If you have any queries about IICSA or the University of Huddersfied’s information security procedures, or how your data will be used, please do not hesitate to contact Ally Goldsmith at IICSA ( [email protected] ).

What materials to share

We would appreciate it if you could send us, or direct us to, any material produced by yourself, colleagues or affiliates, which is either unpublished, in press, in-progress or published in non-academic sources. This would include, but is not limited to: emerging findings, research briefings or reports, presentations, databases, or technologies for relevant data capture.

Please do not send any confidential data in which individuals can be identified . If you are concerned that the data you wish to send may be sensitive, please contact one of the project leads to discuss before submitting it.

How to share your materials

Where possible, materials should be sent by email to Nadia Wager at the University of Huddersfield via [email protected] .

If you are unable to attach a copy of the material, please provide a link or reference to its location.

If you wish to protect your materials, please contact Nadia Wager in the first instance to arrange transfer via a secure FTP (File Transfer Protocol) system.

If you only have hard copies, please send them to:

Dr Nadia Wager, Department of Psychology, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield, HD1 3HD. You must ensure that any materials sent in hard copy are compliant with copyright law.

We are working to a very short timescale, so would appreciate receiving all materials as soon as possible with a fixed deadline of 8 th September 2017 .

Thank you in advance for your help with this important project and please do not hesitate to contact Nadia Wager (Huddersfield) or Ally Goldsmith (IICSA) for further information.