Online grooming

Freedom of Information Act request number: 2022-082

Version date: 14/02/2022

The Performance & Analysis Department have provided the following information:

I am writing to request information regarding cases of the online grooming, or sexual exploitation, of children on video-sharing platforms (VSPs) that have been reported to your police force between 1 January 2017 and 24 January 2022 . 

For the purposes of this request VSP’s are

• Twitch
• TikTok
• Facebook Watch
• IGTV

 Please provide me with the following:

• By calendar year (or by year and month if possible) the number of offences of child grooming/exploitation, broken down by VSP. If possible, please also break this down by age and gender of victim 

• By calendar year (or by year and month if possible) the outcome of all offence in Q1, broken down by VSP. If possible, please also break this down by age and gender of victim 

Year	Victim Age	Victim Gender	VSP	Outcome
2019	12 - 15	Male	Twitch	Investigation complete no suspect identified
2020	0 - 11	Female	Tik Tok	Police - named suspect, victim supports but evidential difficulties
2021	0 - 11	Female	Twitch	Victim declines/unable to support action to identify offender
2021	12 - 15	Male	Tik Tok	Investigation complete no suspect identified
2021	12 - 15	Female	Tik Tok	Investigation complete no suspect identified
2021	12 - 15	Male	Tik Tok	Investigation complete no suspect identified
2021	0 - 11	Female	Tik Tok	Under Investigation

Please note these results are based on free text searches of the names of the VSP’s as given in the request

Therefore the response may not be accurate as it relies on the specific keyword being recorded, and spelt correctly, in the occurrence summary