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Table 2
Police-reported online sexual offences against children and youth, by type of offence and victim characteristics, Canada, 2014 to 2022

Table 2
Police-reported online sexual offences against children and youth, by type of offence and victim characteristics, Canada, 2014 to 2022
Table summary
This table displays the results of Police-reported online sexual offences against children and youth. The information is grouped by Victim characteristics (appearing as row headers), Luring a child, Non-consensual distribution of intimate images, Invitation to sexual touching, Other sexual offences against children and Total online sexual offences against children, calculated using number and percent units of measure (appearing as column headers).
Victim characteristics	Luring a child		Non-consensual distribution of intimate images^{Table 2 Note 1}		Invitation to sexual touching		Other sexual offences against children^{Table 2 Note 2}		Total online sexual offences against children^{Table 2 Note 3}
Victim characteristics	number	percent	number	percent	number	percent	number	percent	number	percent
Children (aged 11 years and younger)	1,481	18	56	3	82	15	119	19	1,738	16
Girls	1,257	15	31	2	74	14	88	14	1,450	13
Boys	224	3	25	1	8	2	31	5	288	3
Youth (aged 12 to 17 years)	6,747	82	1,725	97	450	85	509	81	9,431	84
Girls	5,669	69	1,475	83	388	73	400	64	7,932	71
Boys	1,078	13	250	14	62	12	109	17	1,499	13
Total	8,228	100	1,781	100	532	100	628	100	11,169	100
Note 1 Non-consensual distribution of intimate images became an offence in 2015 under the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act. Return to note 1 referrer Note 2 The category "other sexual offences against children" is a catch all category that encompasses all sexual violations against children (excluding child pornography) which were facilitated by or involved the use of technology. Return to note 2 referrer Note 3 Includes sexual violations against children and other sexual offences where a victim was identified as being a person younger than 18. Return to note 3 referrer Note: An incident is considered to be an online incident if it was flagged as a cybercrime. An incident is flagged as a cybercrime when the crime targets information and communication technology (ICT), or when the crime used ICT to commit the offence. ICT includes, but is not limited to, the Internet, computers, servers, digital technology, digital telecommunications devices, phones and networks. Crimes committed over text and through messages using social media platforms are also considered cybercrime activity. Calculations are based on victim records, where the most serious violation against the victim was identified as the cyber violation. Victims where the gender or the age was unknown are excluded. Given that small counts of victims identified as "gender diverse" may exist, the UCR data available to the public has been recoded to assign these counts to either "female" or "male" in order to ensure the protection of confidentiality and privacy. Victims identified as gender diverse have been assigned to either female or male based on the regional distribution of victims' gender. Percentages may not total 100% due to rounding. Prior to 2020, the number of cybercrimes is an undercount as some police services were unable to report the cybercrime indicator for all years. The data exclude the Quebec City Police in 2014 and 2015, the municipal police service of Calgary from 2014 to 2016, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) from 2014 to 2017 and both the Saint John Police Force and the Canadian Forces Military Police from 2014 to 2019. For 2022, the data exclude Dryden, a detachment of the OPP. Source: Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics, Uniform Crime Reporting Survey.

Date modified:: 2024-03-12