Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what support and guidance her Department provides to young male victims of online exploitation.

The Government is committed to tackling all forms of online child exploitation and supporting victims and survivors.

Online financial child abuse can take several forms. This includes financially motivated sexual extortion (FMSE), which involves offenders threatening to share explicit or intimate material of the victim, unless financial demands are met. Victims can be of any age and gender, the available evidence indicates that boys and young men are disproportionately targeted.

The true prevalence of offending can be difficult to assess, but figures suggest that the scale of this offending is increasing. In 2025, the Internet Watch Foundation took action on 397 reports involving sexually coerced extortion and child sexual abuse imagery, more than double the number in 2024. Of these reports, 98% involved boys aged 14 to 17.

Support is available to young male victims of online exploitation. Childline and the Internet Watch Foundation’s ‘Report Remove’ tool enables children in the UK to report sexual images or videos of themselves confidentially and seek their removal from the internet. This can help children whose images are being shared, or threatened to be shared, as part of financial or other forms of exploitation. In 2025, 1,894 reports were made through the service, an increase of 66% compared with 2024.

The Home Office also provides £2.5 million this year through the Support for Victims and Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (SVSCSA) fund. This fund supports seven voluntary organisations to deliver nationally accessible services, including helplines, counselling, group support, online resource, support for parents and carers, and training for professionals working with victims and survivors.

Alongside this support, the Home Office is leading work across the system to tackle online financial child abuse and disrupt the monetisation of child sexual abuse across mainstream social media sites. This includes developing innovative approaches and interventions to disrupt offenders monestising this horrific abuse.