End child exploitation

Challenge

In Europe, November 18th is End Child Sex Abuse Day. On this day, Child Focus, the Belgian Center for Missing and Sexually Abused Children, wanted to raise the alarm on child pornography. The problem is growing at an alarming rate: new studies estimate that more than 19 million images and videos of child sex abuse are shared online every day between pedophiles. And the images have become more violent and extreme, with the average age of the victims dropping from eight to four years old.

Yet this terrible problem is easily ignored – precisely because it is so horrifying people shy away from taking action. Another opinion piece or article in the press won’t do the trick anymore. It was time for Child Focus to deliver a serious wake-up call.

Inspiration

Child Focus has a hotline where people can report possible footage of child sex abuse. A designated team analyses the reported footage and reports suspicious images to the authorities.

Idea

Days before November 18th, Goedele Liekens, Belgium's most famous sexologist, announced on her social media channels that she was going to release her first porn movie, which triggered a lot of buzz. On November 18th the video was released on a website. What everyone believed was going to be an ordinary porn movie turned out to be a shocking campaign for Child Focus.

The video was an exact re-enactment of footage that was intercepted by the Child Focus team. With one exception: it featured an adult woman instead of a child.

The website featured an explanatory interview, a brave testimony of a victim and concrete steps on how to help battle the problem.

Growth

Since its release, the campaign sparked Facebook Belgium and Google to agree on taking stronger action. In its first week, the video was viewed over a million times and achieved more than 1.7 million Euro in earned media.

Most importantly, the Child Focus campaign led to a 217% increase in child sex abuse reports – making this horrible problem impossible to ignore.