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What is apparent in relation to these studies is a pattern of enforced silence. The childrenin Svedin and Back’s (1996) study were reluctant to disclose the abuse, and these authorssuggested that the recording of the abuse exacerbated, and in some cases prevented,disclosure. Even when confronted with the visual evidence of their abuse, childrencontinued to limit disclosure, telling people only what they thought they already knew.Similarly, in 2003 the Swedish authorities were faced with an investigation of a numberof children whose images had been traced elsewhere in the world and were eventuallyidentified as coming from Sweden. When interviewing the children the same resistance toacknowledging that they were the subjects of the images was found. A similar phenomenonwas observed in England during the investigations of Operation Ore. Some children whowere interviewed categorically denied they had been abused and continued to do so evenwhen the interviewing police officers explained that they knew they had been abusedbecause they had seen the recordings of their abuse. Silbert (1989) had earlier coined thephrase ‘silent conspiracy’ to describe this silence. It is unclear as to whether the sense ofshame and humiliation, often reported in these studies, relates to the photography itselfor the fact of disclosing it to others. We may well hypothesise that the level of silenceis connected to the sexual exploitation and therefore needs to be dealt with within thecontext of exploitative experiences and how these are cognitively and emotionally workedthrough by the child. It may also be that children fear being thought to be complicit inthe abuse or photography through the evidence of, for example, their smiling faces. Scott(2001) reinforced this idea in the description of how abusers had shown children films theyhad made of them as a way of demonstrating their level of engagement and enjoyment.Similarly, Palmer (2005) reported that when children are the subject of abusive images,“there seems to be an element of silencing which is over and above that of the perpetrator/victim dynamic when photography is not involved – another dimension is introduced tothe sexually abusive equation”. She suggested that the reasons for this may be a matrixwhich includes that the children feel they are being seen to let it happen: some know theywere made to smile and therefore appear to be ‘enjoying it’, a fact that clearly indicates thespecifics of sexual exploitation. Child victims of abusive imagery, as well as children thatare abused in other ways, will have been encouraged to introduce other children to theperpetrator and thus feel responsible for letting it happen to them. Some children mayhave been encouraged to be pro-active in their own sexual abuse or that of other children,and some may have been shown their own abuse images and threatened that if they do notco-operate the perpetrator will show the images to significant people in their lives. Sheconjectured that “probably the greatest inhibitors to disclosing what has occurred is thehumiliation that children feel regarding who may have seen their images and their fear ofbeing recognised. They feel they have literally been ‘caught in the act’”.48|Child Pornography and Sexual Exploitation of Children Online