UK National Analysis: Police-recorded child sexual abuse offences rise 6%, online exploitation now 42% of all offences

Police in England and Wales recorded 122,768 child sexual abuse and exploitation offences in 2024, a 6 percent increase from 2023, with the data revealing a 26 percent rise in CSAE with an online footprint, now representing 42 percent of all offences, according to the National Analysis of Police-Recorded CSAE Crimes Report 2024, with 78 percent of all CSAE victims female, 82 percent of suspects male, and 50 percent of offences committed by children aged 10 to 17 years.

Online CSAE now comprising 42 percent of recorded offences confirms the threat has migrated to direct-message environments where traditional policing struggles to achieve preventive presence. Detection modules for grooming, sextortion, CSAM and age-inappropriate contact, deployed in real time across messaging platforms, intercept abuse before it escalates or an image is shared, with Guardii flagging patterns of sustained targeting, coercion and escalation rather than reading every message, surfacing a child in crisis to a parent, school or professional and enabling rapid escalation to the right authority in an emergency, addressing the operational gap the UK police data exposes without requiring blanket surveillance or post-incident reporting alone.