A warning on digital risks

Kerstin Claus, the federal commissioner for child sexual abuse, presented her first report in Berlin on Tuesday, 13 October, and warned that children and young people have never been more at risk of sexualised violence. She attributed a decisive share of that risk to the rapid development of the digital sphere. According to the report, one in four young people aged 14 to 17 has already experienced cyber-grooming, the targeted contact of minors by adults over the internet. Claus said Germany currently has ten million people who experienced sexual violence in childhood or youth. The report contains no new data; it reviews the current state of knowledge and derives political demands from it.

“Never before has the risk for children and young people of experiencing sexualised violence been as high as it is today.”

Claus added that "the risks in the digital space are exploding" and said the abuse of children and young people on the internet is a central theme of the report.

Demands for online protection

Claus called for age-appropriate, safe spaces online, and said that only in such spaces can children grow up healthily. She wants abuse images actively searched for and removed, because as long as such pictures circulate, the abuse does not end. Current criminal law protects only children under 14 from cybercrime, and she wants it extended to young people. Under current law, a sexual assault on someone aged 14 or older is punishable only if the victim visibly resists, which leaves young people who are overwhelmed or frozen in shock unprotected. Claus backs age limits for social media as the right path, but said the focus should not be only on social media, since games with chat functions are also relevant. She also supports age ratings and AI-supported chat checks that detect abusive content as soon as it appears.

Claus asked that the recommendations of the expert commission on child and youth protection in the digital world be implemented. The commission, set up by Federal Family Minister Karin Prien (CDU), presented 56 recommendations in early September, including a minimum age for social media.

Police figures and school protection

Police recorded 17,126 cases of sexual child abuse in 2025, about 1,600 more than five years earlier and 772 more than the year before, according to the crime statistics the report cites. Claus said protection in the physical world is also still insufficient, especially at schools. Eleven of the 16 federal states oblige schools to develop protection concepts, while Bremen, Hamburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Bavaria have no binding rules. She said schools with good protection concepts also see other forms of violence, such as bullying, decline.

“At schools where good protection concepts exist, other forms of violence such as bullying decline.”

She added that such concepts also need quality assurance so that they are actually followed, because otherwise a protection concept is useless.

Reactions and background

Denise Loop, the Greens' spokeswoman on youth policy, called the report a "wake-up call to the federal government and the whole of society" and urged politics to focus on protecting children in daycare, schools or the digital space. The report also recalls the 2010 revelations at the Canisius-Kolleg, a Catholic elite school in Berlin, where numerous abuse cases from the 1970s and 1980s came to light and many more were later disclosed across Germany. Claus said that in the 16 years since that scandal, prevention competencies and resources have been consistently expanded. In 2025 the Bundestag and Bundesrat voted to turn her office into a federal commissioner, with regular reports to parliament, the Bundesrat and the federal government. This first report is the first under that arrangement.