Between 29 April and 10 May 2024, over 30 participants from 24 partner countries as well as Europol and INTERPOL took part in the 14 Victim Identification Task Force (VIDTF), hosted at Europol’s Headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands. The operation focused on supporting the identification of victims and perpetrators present in over 68 million media files containing child sexual abuse material seized by various law enforcement authorities and submitted to Europol.

The participants analysed over 404 datasets depicting specific unidentified victims of child sexual abuse. The specialists managed to identify the countries where the crimes were likely to have been executed for over 180 of the datasets analysed during the operation. Europol has already disseminated over 70 of these datasets to the competent authorities while this process is still ongoing. In 15 of the datasets, experts included identification information on the victims or offenders. So far, four of the victims have been identified and safeguarded by the relevant national authorities.

During the VIDTF, experts analysed different datasets, including very recently produced child sexual exploitation material, some of which from 2024, but also so-called ‘cold cases’ with pictures and videos made more than five years ago. The images and videos depicted male and female victims of varying ages originating from different countries around the world. The victims abused in images and videos ranged from toddlers (aged three years and younger) to pubescents.

Since 2014, Europol has been regularly bringing together victim identification experts from around the world to focus on unsolved cases of child sexual abuse. Over 700 children have been safeguarded and 230 offenders arrested with support from VIDTF operations.