90% if this campaign consist creative strategy. It was a very bold and daring strategy to look at the problem of child sex abuse this way. No filters, no euphemisms, no figure of speech. Just the simple but horrifying truth. By strategically choosing the right social ambassador and give media channels the scoop of the story, a campaign was able to show this harsh reality to such a wide-spread audience for the first time. A reality that just couldn’t be ignored anymore and pierced itself into the Belgian and even European parliament. Where finally concrete steps were taken.

The problem of child porn is growing at an alarming rate. New studies estimate that more than 19 million images and videos of child sex abuse are shared online every day between pedophiles. Also, the images become more violent and extreme, while the average age of the victims has dropped from 8 to 4 years old. Although the horrifying problem of child sex abuse is growing at an alarming rate, it is also easily ignored. Precisely because it’s so horrifying. People tend to look away and sometimes even minimize the problem.They know it’s bad, but actually they don’t. And yet another opinion piece or article with new numbers doesn’t do the trick anymore. On End Child Sex Abuse Day, Child Focus wanted to urgently raise awareness with a serious wake up call.

Child sex abuse is just one of many societal issues that Child Focus is battling. It's one of the most difficult problems to raise awareness about, because it’s an invisible problem.When there is a natural disaster or a war raging, you can confront people with images to make them aware and take action.This is simply not possible with the problem of child pornography, and rightfully so.But this is also exactly the reason why it’s so easy to ignore: you’ve never seen it.You know it’s bad, you can never understand the true horror and scale of the problem.The latest research into the matter showed that this problem wasn’t going to resolve itself.On the contrary, it was only getting worse. Because of this, Child Focus wanted to launch a serious wake-up call to put the harsh truth of child sex abuse right in the open and make it impossible to ignore again.

How could we show the reality when it’s illegal to show the reality? This called for some breakthrough thinking.That’s why we stared from a description from a real illegal video that was intercepted online by Child Focus. We created an exact re-enactment of that video but replaced the child with an adult woman. This way, the video could be shown to an adult audience legally.To spread this video to a broad audience, started from the idea that child porn isn’t porn, but abuse.That’s when we called in the help of Goedele Liekens, Belgium’s famous sexologist.She announced the release of her first porn movie, called ‘Chalet’. When people finally saw that “porn movie”, they quickly realized that these images had nothing to do with porn whatsoever. And for the first time, a campaign was able to confront the media and even politics with the underestimated problem of child sex abuse.

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, 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.

The video was viewed over 1 million times in one week. The campaign gained more than 1.7 million euro in earned media. Since its release, it also instantly dominated all national, and even international media and sparked a huge debate for days. A debate that continued in the Belgian and European parliament where four concrete resolutions were voted including the European directive concerning child sex abuse that was finally made law in ALL European countries. It also boosted the funding of preventing programs such as Stop It Now.

All this led to a 217% increase of child sex abuse reports. A result that’s even more shocking than the campaign itself.