Four victims of child abuse identified following week-long task force at Europol

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.

The following countries took part of the VIDTF 14:

EU Member States: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden

Non-EU Member States: Australia, Colombia, Moldova, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Ukraine

EU agencies and international organisations: Europol, INTERPOL

Public appeal for help

You can help us identify the origin of certain objects as part of Europol’s Trace an Object initiative. Visit Stop Child Abuse to see if you recognise any identifiable features or individuals in the publicly released images. Europol periodically releases new series of pictures containing non-confrontational details of images extracted from child sexual abuse cold cases in the hope that someone will recognise a detail that will help narrow down the location of the victim. No clue is too small.

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Headquartered in The Hague, the Netherlands, we support the 27 EU Member States in their fight against terrorism, cybercrime and other serious and organised forms of crime. We also work with many non-EU partner states and international organisations. From its various threat assessments to its intelligence-gathering and operational activities, Europol has the tools and resources it needs to do its part in making Europe safer.