Every day, a vast amount of child sexual abuse material is uploaded and shared online. As this material spreads, many survivors live with the fear being recognized and are even stalked online. For many, the original abuse is only the beginning of an inescapable cycle.

This haunting film tells the story of one such survivor.

At the beginning, she is young, innocent and unsuspecting. But as the motives of her male tormentor are laid bare, we know that innocence won’t last.

We then see her as a young teen. Then on the day she moves out. We see her with a boyfriend at a party and finally we see her married with a young daughter of her own. But the man is always there. She can’t escape him and what he did. She can’t escape the torment he brought into her life.

In 2017, The Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P) created Project Arachnid–a virtual crawler designed to hunt down online child sexual abuse material (CSAM) that tech companies fail to remove from their platforms.

In September 2021, the G7 countries (UK, USA, Canada, Japan, Germany, France and Italy, plus the EU) met to discuss the need for greater measures around privacy and protection online. Our film was shared at the opening of the conference.

In his closing remarks, the UK Home Office said, “I can’t stress enough how valuable it was to have C3P’s video shown at the start to frame the discussion… to get across the immeasurable human cost of (CSAM).”

On Jan 17, 2022 – Arachnid’s fifth anniversary – C3P decided it was time to publicly call out big tech’s inaction. They released the film on their owned social channels in tandem with a small, targeted online media campaign.

The arch structure of our soundtrack was painstakingly crafted to be a perfect parallel to our haunting story.

First, to reflect our opening scene’s innocence, ‘Hush Little Baby’ cheerfully emanates from the TV as the little girl enjoys her show.

But the innocent melody gets derailed and deconstructed as our darker story plays out. Musical layers build as does the plot. Each layer adds complexity, mirroring our survivor’s mounting inner struggles at every successive stage of her life.

Finally, as we look back at that fateful morning, we return to ‘Hush’, but this time it is sadder and much heavier.