Child abuse victim found after researcher spotted school badge

A girl who appeared in hundreds of child sexual abuse images and videos has been tracked down after years of searching by internet safety experts. The victim, who is now a young adult, was finally identified and contacted after researchers saw a picture of her school uniform. Investigators from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) first saw the girl in child sexual abuse material in 2020, but back then had no way to find her. The analyst who identified the girl said it was "a huge uplift" that she was able to find the young woman - which is rare for safety researchers working in this field. The child, who was around 13 years old, was groomed over video calls and text chats into creating content of herself - some of it in the most extreme category for this kind of abuse. The IWF uses reports from the public and its own searching to find and remove child sexual abuse material from the internet. Although analysts are not tasked with finding victims, occasionally they issue reports to police if there are strong enough clues in the material they see. But successfully identifying abused children from this kind of content is rare. The IWF analyst, who wants to be known as Mabel, said in th

Mar 19, 2026 → Mar 19, 2026