Up-Close and Personal: Challenges and Opportunities in Analyzing Online Sexual Abuse Using Closed-Source Police Data

• In Event: New Developments in Research on IPV and Sexual Abuse in Data-Intense Denmark

Abstract

Online sexual abuse (e.g. grooming, image-based sexual abuse, sextortion, written sexual harassment) is rapidly increasing, but our knowledge of this "new" type of sexual offending remains limited due to a scarcity of high-quality data sources. This paper dis-cusses the challenges and opportunities of analyzing online sexual abuse using closed-source police data on resolved sexual crime cases, comprising material like crime re-ports, transcripts of investigative interviews, chat logs, image-based evidence, and court documents. Specifically, we showcase the unique insights of such comprehen-sive data in unpacking the sequential phases of sexual offending, including the inter-play between online and offline contexts at various stages of crime commission. How-ever, we also highlight that obtaining such insights comes with significant methodologi-cal challenges, including: (i) complex and time-intensive procedures for data access, (ii) laborious and complicated coding processes, and (iii) the emotional toll on researchers such analyses entail due to the sensitive nature of the cases. Based on the contention that closed-source police data is indeed worth the effort, we finally provide researchers with a set of first steps in overcoming these challenges and gain a rich and detailed un-derstanding of the dynamics of online sexual abuse.

Authors

• Sidsel Kirstine Harder, University of Copenhagen

• Christopher Kehlet Ebbrecht, University of Copenhagen

• Julie Munch Hjort, University of Copenhagen