For people to allow themselves to view sexual images of children, they will generally be using a number of self-justifications to persuade themselves that it is ok to do what they are doing.
This process is called ‘self-talk’. Self-talk is the internal argument someone uses to give themselves permission to do something they know they shouldn’t be doing.
In some illegal sexual material of children, no real children are involved. Examples are drawn images, manga/hentai/anime images, or computer- or AI-generated images of child characters. Some people who use such images may tell themselves that it is okay to look at that kind of material because no real children are shown or abused. However, in our experience, the repeated use of such material, especially on the Internet, increases the risk for people to get in contact with other users of such material or leads them to accessing other websites or platforms online. This can in turn lead to accessing illegal sexual images of real children which means directly harming the children in the images.
Research from the Finnish organisation Protect Children (2024) has also found that the use of illegal sexual images of children is linked to an increased risk for people to then seek out contact to children, posing an even greater danger to real children.
Let’s have a closer look at justifications that people may use to allow themselves to look at any type of sexual material involving children
Here’s an example:
People will be persuaded by the self-talk process if their ‘yes’ justifications in favour of doing the behaviour are stronger than their ‘no’ arguments against the behaviour.
By being aware of the self-talk process you go through, and the negative effects of offending for yourself and others, you will increase your ability and motivation to avoid further offending.
This film includes some of the justifications that people use to allow themselves to continue offending online.
In the box below, the left hand side column contains some self-talk justifications you might have used to justify your use of sexual images of children. In the right hand side column list self-talk statements which you could use in response to the matching justification to dissuade yourself from engaging in the behaviour.
Please add at the bottom of the table any additional self-talk justifications that you use, along with a matching response. You should repeat all the phrases you write in the responses column in your head, so that this sort of thinking becomes automatic if you start to use the justifications.
There is an example provided.
| Justifications | Responses |
| “I am only looking at pictures.” | “The children in the images are real children who are being sexually abused.” |
| “The images were already online.” | |
| “I did not directly abuse the child in the image.” | |
| “The child in the image is smiling, so they must be enjoying it.” | |
| “I didn’t produce the pictures, and they were already there.” | |
| “I’ve had no direct contact with the child.” | |
| “The children are clothed, so these images cannot be illegal.” | |
| “This isn’t abuse because no adults are in the images.” | |
| “The child took this photograph of themselves.” |
