Profile of child sexual abuse material offenders in Portugal: Considerations of a decade (2011–2021)

Despite a growing body of literature on child sexually abusive materials (CSAM) in Portugal, this investigation is the first to examine the evolution of this form of crime over a decade and create a profile of people who have committed sexual offences in Portugal, specifically collecting demographic characteristics of those who have committed sexual offences, victims’ characteristics, characteristics of the offence and measures applied. This study collected data about 294 people who have committed sexual offences, mostly males (99%) aged between 16 and 77. Most perpetrators (73.5%) reported more than one victim, who tended to be women (80%) and of different ages (84.4%). Regarding the characteristics of the offence, most of them had image files (98.2%) and accessed the content through the Internet (62.2%). Still, there was a minority of people who had committed sexual offences that interacted with the victims in person (15.5%) or tried to establish face-to-face contact using social networks (20.4%). Most people who have committed sexual offences were arrested for only one offence (69.4%), and many subjects had no criminal history prior to the conviction for their current offence. Nevertheless, 6.5% had a previous record for the same type of crime. More than half of the people who have committed sexual offences whose data were collected are awaiting sentences (57.7%). The implications of these findings are discussed, along with important directions for targeted prevention strategies and robust legal frameworks to address CSAM.