In light of the draft report from workstream one of the Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Data Short Life Working Group, Child Sexual Abu…

The Scottish Government are continuously looking to improve local and national data and evidence around child protection. We acknowledge that national data on child sexual abuse and exploitation is limited, which is why we set up the Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Data Short Life Working Group to take forward focused work in this area. Part of that focus is to improve consistency in reporting the scale and nature of child sexual abuse and exploitation across the whole of Scotland.There are a number of reasons why the number of police recorded sexual crimes, with a victim under the age of 18 are higher than the number of children on the Child Protection Register with a child sexual abuse or child sexual exploitation concern. These include the fact that police recorded crime is a count of crimes, not victims. One incident could involve multiple crimes or a child can be a repeat victim, with multiple crimes occurring throughout the year. Recorded crime data is reported by date recorded by the police, not when the crime occurred. We know that 13% of these crimes occurred before the implementation of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009 in December 2010. We also know a proportion of these crimes are cyber enabled, in such cases, the victim can be an undercover police officer or vigilante group. Previous analysis suggests an estimated 1,490 Sexual crimes recorded in 2024-25 were both cyber-crimes and had a victim under the age of 18.Child protection registration statistics are a relatively poor proxy for the number of children being supported by statutory services due to child sexual abuse or child sexual exploitation concern. Registrations across all categories have been declining for some time and many children may be known to services, where sexual abuse may have been identified as a concern, but their cases are registered under another category— particularly when the child has experienced multiple forms of harm. Additionally, many children who have been sexually abused may not require a child protection plan(and therefore registration), as they are well protected by parents or carers, or are supported through other processes.