IJM on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour
Summary:
March 2026
Millions tuned into BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour as Nuala McGovern hosted IJM UK’s Chief Public Engagement Officer Molly Hodson and SafeToNet’s co‑founder Sharon Pursey OBE to expose a hidden and fast‑growing threat: the online sexual abuse and exploitation of children.
Right now, sex offenders around the world, including here in the UK, are directing the abuse of children without leaving their homes.
“It’s a sign of the times in a really terrible way,” host Nuala McGovern reflected during the programme.
On Woman’s Hour – from 32:15 – listeners heard how this abuse is taking place on the same social media and messaging platforms people use every day.
Traffickers, often family members, are exploiting children and livestreaming the abuse for paying offenders around the world to direct in real time. The UK is among the top three global consumers of livestreamed child sexual abuse (UK National Crime Agency, 2019).
The scale of abuse is horrifying. In 2022 alone, nearly half a million children in the Philippines were trafficked to produce new child sexual exploitation material, including livestreamed content. That's roughly 1 in every 100 Filipino children (IJM & Nottingham Rights Lab, 2023).
Urgent action is needed to protect children everywhere – including in the UK. Men in the UK who report online sexual offending behaviours are 2.5 times more likely to seek in‑person sexual contact with children (Childlight, 2023).
Sharon Pursey explained how on‑device safeguarding technology could stop livestreamed abuse before it starts:
The technology “works across every application on the device, including the camera. It sits behind the screen rendering layer... It hasn’t compromised privacy in any way, but it would stop [child sexual abuse material] from being rendered to the screen or broadcast via the camera.”
On-device protection operates locally via the device operating system. It works alongside end-to-end encryption and does not share user data to a third party.
Livestreamed child sexual abuse should not be possible when technology already exists that could block it at the source and make children everywhere safer.
Your voice can help stop the abuse and protect children.