The number of reports of sexual exploitation crimes against children on Cape Cod, the Islands, Bristol County and Plymouth County went up 46 percent in 2024. In particular, children are increasingly being targeted online.
That’s from a new report by Children’s Cove, the children’s advocacy center serving Cape Cod and the Islands.
Children’s Cove Community Engagement and Education Program Manager Jacob Stapledon presented the results of the report to the Barnstable County Board of Regional Commissioners Wednesday.
He said the 46 percent jump is likely the combined result of two factors: an increase in how often these crimes happen to children, and an increase in how often they are reported.
“Over the past couple of years, we have done a lot of training with community members, mandated reporters, and law enforcement. And so it is getting reported more,” he said. “However, that significant of a jump is indicating that it's also happening more often.”
To give a regional picture of the situation, the annual report was done in collaboration with the Children’s Advocacy Center of Bristol County and the Plymouth County Children’s Advocacy Center.
In total, the region’s children’s advocacy centers received 533 reports of sexual exploitation crimes impacting 471 children. The majority of reports (75 percent) involved children between 13 and 17 years old.
Fourteen percent of reports involved high-school aged adults—those are 18-year-old high school seniors.
A little less than 11 percent of cases involved children 12 and under, including children as young as four years old.
Eighty percent of impacted children were girls, 18 percent were boys and two percent were trans or non-binary.
Stapledon helped county commissioners understand different terminology, including online enticement.
“This is where an individual is communicating online with someone that they believe to be a child with the intent to commit a sexual offense or abduction,” he said. “The rate in which these crimes are occurring now has significantly jumped.”
Online exploitation crimes can easily go unnoticed, Stapledon explained.
“It can be a lot harder to navigate because children don't know where to go for help, and sometimes this exploitation is happening directly in their home,” he said. “So nobody can necessarily see that this is happening because it's behind closed bedroom doors.”
Stapledon also noted that artificial intelligence is changing the landscape for online exploitation. AI can be used to create deepfakes, which are videos that have been digitally altered to make it look like specific people are in the videos when they actually are not. According to the report, AI is being used to create deepfakes of child sexual abuse material, also known as child pornography.
“The manipulation of images through AI is a pressing concern,” Stapledon said. “We’ve definitely been seeing cases and hearing of cases regionally where children’s images are being manipulated through AI, creating these deepfakes, creating CSAM [child sexual abuse material].”
The report also has a section that tells families with children what they can do to help prevent these crimes, including a specific list of action steps.
The Children’s Cove website includes additional educational resources for parents and caregivers, teens and children.
