What Children’s Advocacy Centers Need to Know About Sadistic Online Exploitation Networks
July 14, 2026
By Amanda Goharian
Director of Research & Insights
Thorn
A 12-year-old is referred to your Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) for suspected abuse after multiple hospitalizations for self-harming behaviors. The referral centers on repeated cutting, increasing isolation, and significant changes in behavior over the past several months that point to potential abuse. Nowhere does it mention an online component.
As the case unfolds, additional pieces emerge:
– The child’s caregivers describe growing secrecy around the child’s online activity
– The child references online challenges and communicating with people across multiple platforms
– The child discloses being threatened with self-generated child sexual abuse images they shared
During a forensic interview, the young person mentions their involvement in an online group where they are encouraged to participate in extreme behaviors, including live-streaming self-harm. Yet, they remain reluctant to share more details, expressing loyalty to the group and the people in it.
Increasingly, CACs across the nation are encountering cases involving an emergent form of Sadistic Online Exploitation (SOE). While relatively uncommon, reports are increasing rapidly and often surface only after severe harm has occurred.
Thorn recently undertook dedicated research examining how these online communities operate, how they challenge traditional child protection frameworks, and what those challenges mean for professionals working to identify, assess, and support affected youth.
Understanding SOE
Sadistic forms of child sexual exploitation have long existed, often involving relatively insular networks of adult offenders organized around the production and exchange of child sexual abuse material.
In recent years, however, a new form has emerged: youth-dominated online communities where adolescents exploit other adolescents. In these environments, child sexual exploitation intersects with other extreme forms of abuse, including self-harm, sibling abuse, animal abuse, cybercrime, violence, and other forms of offline harm. Within these networks, these abuse types are blended and serve a shared purpose.
Like many adolescent peer groups, they provide belonging, recognition, identity, and status. What makes them different is that participation is reinforced through exploitation. Harming oneself or participating in the harm of others becomes the primary way belonging is demonstrated and reinforced. Grooming extends beyond sexual exploitation into a broader process of social conditioning. Young people are introduced to harmful group norms, rewarded for escalating behaviors, encouraged to distance themselves from protective relationships, and sometimes pressured to recruit others.
Understanding that mechanism of belonging is critical because it points to the complexity of youth involvement. Participation may be driven by different motivations, emotional needs, and levels of engagement. Some youth are primarily seeking acceptance or connection while others are deeply embedded in the group’s ethos. Understanding what the group provides to each young person is critical to tailoring assessment, treatment, and long-term disengagement.
Viewing SOE through this lens helps explain why these cases challenge traditional assumptions about exploitation as the young people involved may not identify themselves as victims, may remain emotionally attached to the community causing harm, or may themselves be actively involved in exploiting others. It also helps explain why a young person may actively resist interventions designed to help them leave.
Why This Matters for CACs
One of the strongest themes to emerge from Thorn’s research is that youth involved in SOE rarely present as obvious cases of online exploitation.
Instead, children victimized or involved in SOE groups often enter our systems through whatever concern becomes visible first: self-harm, self-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM), significant behavioral changes, animal abuse, abuse of siblings, or another incident that appears unrelated to technology-facilitated exploitation. While the presenting concern remains accurate, it represents only one visible part of a broader pattern of coercion, exploitation, and social conditioning occurring in their lives.
These cases also challenge one of the organizing assumptions of child protection response: that victims and those causing harm can be assessed separately. In SOE cases, young people may occupy both positions over the course of exploitation or even at the same time. Responding effectively will require assessment frameworks that can account for victimization, coercion, and harmful behavior without treating them as mutually exclusive.
Implications for Children’s Advocacy Centers
One implication is that comprehensive intake matters; the referral reason is often only one visible point within a broader coercive pattern. The next young person referred to your CAC for self-harm, self-generated CSAM, or another seemingly unrelated concern may not be experiencing SOE. But some will be. Asking questions that uncover the broader context may be the difference between responding to the incident and understanding the pathway that led there. Screening tools should be adapted to better explore digital relationships, online communities, platform migration, coercive group dynamics, and online behaviors that may not surface until rapport has been established.
Another implication is that multidisciplinary collaboration and the MDT model take on additional importance. SOE sits at the intersection of child sexual exploitation, behavioral health, youth violence, cybercrime, and online safety. Effective assessment and intervention depend on bringing together perspectives across investigative, clinical, victim services, and child advocacy roles.
A third implication is that specialized referral networks need to be established. These cases often require expertise beyond traditional child sexual abuse response, including clinicians familiar with severe self-harm, technology-facilitated exploitation, youth violence, and disengagement from coercive online communities.
Finally, CACs have an opportunity to strengthen community awareness. Helping educators, caregivers, healthcare providers, and other frontline professionals recognize how these cases present can support earlier identification and intervention before a young person’s exposure escalates into crisis.
As these cases continue to emerge, preparedness will depend on recognizing the dynamics involved, adapting existing practices, and strengthening coordinated responses around some of the most severe forms of technology-facilitated exploitation affecting youth today.
Looking Ahead
SOE represents a rapidly evolving challenge. Effective response requires collaboration across child protection, law enforcement, behavioral health, education, technology, and community-based systems.
CACs are uniquely positioned to help bridge some of those gaps.
To learn more about Thorn’s research on SOE and its implications for CACs, join our webinar “Sadistic Online Exploitation: Foundational Knowledge & Implications for Children’s Advocacy Centers.” You can also explore the full report by clicking here.
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Learn and understand SOE’s core dynamics, how it differs from other exploitation cases, and what CACs should anticipate at intake and across MDT coordination for our upcoming webinar with Thorn, Sadistic Online Exploitation: Foundational Knowledge and Implications for Children’s Advocacy Centers, on July 30, 2026 starting at 2 p.m. ET. You’ll hear from Amanda Goharian, a subject matter expert in technology-facilitated child sexual abuse, CSAM, and online safety. Click here to register for the webinar.
Thorn is an innovative technology nonprofit that transforms how children are protected from sexual abuse and exploitation in the digital age. Thorn builds scalable tools to help platforms detect and prevent child sexual abuse and exploitation, supports investigators in finding victims faster, and shares research and technical guidance to shape policy and improve protections for children worldwide. By working within the broader child protection ecosystem, Thorn is creating a digital safety net to protect every child’s right to simply be a kid. To learn more about Thorn’s mission to protect children in the digital age, visit thorn.org.
Amanda Goharian is the Director of Research & Insights at Thorn, a nonprofit dedicated to transforming how children are protected from sexual abuse and exploitation in the digital age. She is a subject-matter expert in technology-facilitated child sexual abuse, CSAM, and online safety. At Thorn, she leads the organization’s research strategy focused on identifying emerging online child safety risks and translating findings into practical, decision-ready insights for the child safety ecosystem. With over a decade of experience, her work prioritizes applied, youth-informed research to inform effective policies, tools, and interventions that strengthen youth protections and resilience.
