Annually, twenty thousand Dutch men are guilty of sexual abuse of children abroad, according to a report by the WODC. In total, between 131,000 and 171,000 Dutch men have ever been guilty of child sex tourism.
The sample was conducted among 9,696 men living in the Netherlands between the ages of eighteen and eighty. This shows that 2.3 percent of them have ever had sex with a minor abroad while they were adults.
Two-thirds of the respondents committed the crime in the past five years. Based on this, the Scientific Research and Data Center (WODC) concludes that at least twenty thousand Dutch men travel abroad each year and are guilty of so-called transnational sexual abuse of children (TSK).
Three-quarters of the questioned perpetrators admit that they deliberately traveled abroad for child abuse.
When the 2.3 percent is converted over the entire population, this means that 131,000 to 171,000 Dutch men have ever been guilty of child sex tourism.
Online indecency not included in percentage
TSK can also be committed online. This uses livestreams, in which minors perform sexual acts for the webcam.
If men who have ever been guilty of this are included in the study, the percentage of perpetrators rises to 3.4 percent of Dutch men. Strikingly, 86 percent of the online perpetrators have also committed a physical form of child abuse.
It is the first time that an estimate can be made of the number of Dutch men who have been guilty of child sex tourism.