New report exposes link between online grooming, sexual exploitation and child disappearances

Today, Missing Children Europe publishes a new report, From Grooming to Abuse, Exploitation and Disappearance: Protecting Children Across Digital Spaces, exposing the often-overlooked connection between online grooming, sexual exploitation and child disappearance.

In Western Europe, 1 in 5 children (19.6%) report experiencing online solicitation or grooming before turning 18. Grooming is the deliberate and manipulative process through which perpetrators build trust with a child online with the aim of sexually exploiting or abusing them. Increasingly, perpetrators adapt their tactics to children's online habits, targeting them through social media, gaming platforms, and communication applications widely used by young people.

If not recognised in time, grooming can lead to different forms of child sexual exploitation and abuse: the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, sexual extortion, live streaming of child sexual abuse, in-person abuse, and sexual exploitation.

The report comes at a critical time, as since 3 April 2026 online service providers in the EU no longer have a legal basis to voluntarily detect, report and remove child sexual abuse content from their platforms.

Missing Children Europe highlights that online grooming, sexual exploitation, and child disappearance are closely interconnected. Grooming can both lead and result from a child going missing: children may be manipulated into leaving home by perpetrators, may run away due to shame, fear or distress, or may become more vulnerable to grooming following a missing episode. In 2025, Europe's missing children hotlines (116 000) identified 92 cases where online grooming was linked to a child going missing.

Despite the scale of the problem, responses at European level remain fragmented and insufficient to protect children against grooming, sexual exploitation and the risks of going missing. Legal gaps persist, prevention efforts are underfunded, and reporting mechanisms are underused. Multi-agency cooperation is often hindered by unclear roles and poor information-sharing.

Missing Children Europe calls on EU and national decision-makers to act now by:

• Criminalising grooming for all children under 18, regardless of age of sexual consent, and explicitly recognise online-only abuse;
• Regulating platforms by holding them accountable, mandating detection of grooming under the proposed EU Regulation on combating child sexual abuse, and requiring the implementation of safety-by-design measures
  
• Strengthen digital literacy and mandatory trauma-informed training for professionals;
• Formalising multi-agency cooperation through clear referral pathways and real-time information sharing.