Child sexual abuse victim begging Elon Musk to delete links with her image

The victim of sexual abuse of children begged Elon Musk to stop linking to provide her abuse images to post on his social media platform.

“Hearing my abuse — and the abuse of many others — is still circulating and merchandise here,” said Zora (not her real name), who lives in the United States and was first abused 20 years ago.

“Every time someone sells or shares child abuse materials, they directly contribute to the original terrible abuse.”

X said it has “zero tolerance for child sexual abuse material” and that coping with those who exploit children remains “a top priority.”

The BBC found images of Zora while investigating global trade in sexual abuse materials, and it is estimated that the Childlight of the Global Institute for Child Safety is worth billions of dollars.

The material is one of the caches of thousands of similar photos and videos sold in X accounts. We contacted traders via the messaging app Telegram, which led us to a bank account related to Indonesian Jakartas.

Zora was first abused by family members. Among the pedophiles who collect and trade such content, her collection of abusive images becomes infamous. Many other victims face the same situation as images of abuse continue to circulate today.

Zora angered the trade continues to this day.

“My body is not a commodity. It never, nor will it be,” she said.

“Those who distribute this material are not passive bystanders, they are co-conspirators.”

Zora’s abused images were initially only available on the so-called Dark Web, but she now has to publicly promote real life on X with links.

Social media platforms are trying to get rid of their illegal material platforms, but the scale of the problem is huge.

Last year, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received more than 20 million mandatory reports from tech companies about incidents of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) – illegal images and videos on its platform.

The NCMEC attempted to identify victims and perpetrators, and the organization then contacted law enforcement.

We are close to the “hacker” group anonymous people who are trying to fight trade with images of child abuse on X. One of them told us that the situation was as always.

They sent us to an account on X. It uses photos of real children’s head and shoulders. There is nothing obscene.

However, words and emojis in the account’s creatures make it clear that the owner is selling child sexual abuse material and there is a link on the messaging app Telegram.

The trader appears to be based in Indonesia and offers a “VIP package”, image sets and misuse video archives for sale to pedophiles around the world.

The anonymous activist has been working to report multiple accounts of the trader on X, so the platform’s audit system can remove it. But every time one account is deleted, he tells us that another new account will replace it.

Traders seem to have overseen over 100 nearly identical accounts. The activist told us that when he contacted the trader directly using the telegram, the trader replied that he had thousands of videos and images for sale.

“I have kids. Young kids 7-12,” he wrote in the message, the activists seen by the BBC. He also explained that some of it showed rape of a child.

We contacted the trader ourselves.

He provided a link to a sample of the material that we did not open or view. Instead, we contacted experts from the Canadian Centre for Children in Winnipeg (CCCP) who work with law enforcement and can view such content legally.

“The Telegram Account is a taster’s pack due to the lack of better terms – essentially a collage of materials he gets in all the different victims,” ​​explained Lloyd Richardson, technical director of CCCP. “When we look at all the different images in the collage, I want to say thousands.”

There is an image of Zora in the file.

Her abuser in the United States was prosecuted and imprisoned years ago, but has been shared and sold around the world before the abuse footage.

Zora tells us: “Over the years, I’ve tried to overcome my past instead of letting it determine my future, but the perpetrators and stalkers still find a way to observe this dirt.”

As he grows older, stalkers discover Zora’s identity, contact her online and threaten her. She said she felt “bullying guilty of my childhood crime.”

To identify traders who sell Zora photos, we become buyers.

The trader sent us his bank information and an online payment account, both of which are listed with the account holder.

The anonymous activist found that the name was also related to two remittances and another bank account.

We tracked a person with the same name as listed on the account to the address of the outskirts of Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia.

A producer who works for the BBC World Service in the city went to visit the address and faced a man with a man, and when evidence was obtained, he said he was shocked.

“I know nothing about it,” he said.

The man confirmed that one of the bank accounts was his and said it was created for a transaction related to the collateral. He said he hadn’t used the account since then and he would contact his bank to find out what was going on. He denied his knowledge of another bank account or remittance.

We can’t be sure if he is involved, so we don’t name him.

Our survey found that the way Zora’s images were sold is a method used by hundreds of traders around the world.

Posts on X use different hashtags familiar to pedophiles. Images appearing on the platform are usually taken from known child abuse images, but can be cropped so they are not obscene.

Elon Musk said that when he took over X (then called Twitter) in 2022, canceling child sexual abuse material was his “top priority”.

Overall, social media platforms can do more than just prevent criminals from posting repeatedly, said Lloyd Richardson of CCCP.

“Glad we can send a revocation notice [to social media platforms]They deleted their accounts, but that was the minimum. ”

The problem, he said, is that users can return to the platform with a new account within a few days.

X tells us that child sexual exploitation has “zero tolerance”. “We are constantly investing in advanced testing, allowing us to quickly take action on content and accounts that violate the rules,” a spokesperson said.

The platform tells us that it “works closely with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and supports law enforcement to prosecute these heinous crimes”.

“All channels have been adjusted, and so far, more than 565,000 groups and channels related to CSAM transmission have been banned in 2025,” the telegraph said.

The platform says it has more than a thousand moderators working on this issue.

“The Telegram actively monitors public content across the platform and clears offensive material when it can attract users or reports,” a spokesperson said.

When we told Zora to trade her photos with X, she provided this information to Elon Musk, the owner of the platform: “We share, trade and sell our abuse on the apps we own. If you don’t hesitate to take action to protect your children, please do the same for the rest of us. Now it’s time to take action.”

If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this report, you can BBC action line