| Brief | On November 18th, the European End Child Sex Abuse Day, a confrontational video was released. What everyone believed was going to be a long-awaited porn movie by Belgium’s most famous sexologist Goedele Liekens, turned out to be a shocking campaign for Child Focus, the Belgian Center for Missing and Sexually Abused Children. The video was an exact re-enactment of real footage of sexual child abuse that was intercepted online. With one exception: it featured an adult woman instead of a child. It was based on the descriptions given by the Child Focus team that analyses reported footage. The video’s website was supported with an explanatory interview, a brave testimony from a victim and concrete steps on how to help. |
| Story | Wunderman Thompson Antwerp and Child Focus face the problem of child porn. November 18th is the European day on the Protection of Children against Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse. Every year, Child Focus, the Belgian centre for missing and sexually exploited children, uses this day to highlight their fight against child abuse. This year’s campaign by Wunderman Thompson Antwerp opens people’s eyes and breaks taboos. To do this, a re-enactment of a video of a 8-year-old child being sexually abused was made with two adult actors. The original images where found on the Internet and reported to Child Focus via stopchildporno.be. The video confronts the public with the harsh reality of child sexual abuse. It is an invisible problem for most people, and rarely discussed openly. Goedele Liekens, a famous Belgian sexologist and psychologist, launched the campaign. She’s well-known for her straight-forward opinions about sex and the influence of porn in society. Liekens announced the release of her first porn movie, CHALET. In her own words: “to get rid of the biggest misconception about porn”. A few days later, she released the video on chaletfilm.be. Everyone watching the video soon realized what the misconception was: child porn isn’t porn. It’s abuse. These images of abuse are abundant according to Child Focus. Every day 19 million photos and videos of child abuse are circulated online between pedophiles, and this figure is on its way to doubling every year. This is why we had to sound the alarm, and make this awful issue a top priority. With this campaign, Child Focus, wants to put the subject back on the table and remind everyone to always report suspicious images via stopchildporno.be. This is the only way for Child Focus and the federal police to remove those images from the Internet and to investigate those responsible. The campaign brings this seldom discussed issue into the open so that parents, victims, politicians, and society can start talking and reacting so that we can protect all children from all forms of sexual abuse. |