Knowledge about online child sexual exploitation (CSE) offenders mostly remains limited to offender populations known by the criminal justice system. Because of its hidden and anonymous nature, knowledge on those offenders active on the Darkweb is especially scarce. For the current study, researchers had access to a unique dataset of member communication on a Darkweb CSE website, as well as members' virtual movements (or clicks) across the side, regardless of being verbally active or not. This offered a unique opportunity to establish behavioral patterns of members who were unaware that they were being observed. This paper summarizes the results of a descriptive analysis of the growth of member count, the frequency with which members were online, and detailed member behavior such as their activity on certain sub-forums and their downloading activity. Main findings include that although only 3.4 % of the members were communicatively active, the vast majority of 93.6 % of members downloaded CSE material. Results indicate that regardless of being verbally active, most members do engage with the site's content, and thus, effectively impact the CSE community. This has important implications for law enforcement practice, which will be discussed.

关于在线儿童性剥削 (CSE) 犯罪者的知识大多仍仅限于刑事司法系统已知的犯罪者群体。由于其隐藏和匿名的性质，对那些活跃在暗网上的罪犯的了解尤其稀缺。对于当前的研究，研究人员可以访问 Darkweb CSE 网站上成员交流的独特数据集，以及成员在侧面的虚拟动作（或点击），无论是否口头活跃。这为建立不知道自己被观察的成员的行为模式提供了一个独特的机会。本文总结了对会员数量增长、会员在线频率、详细的会员行为，例如他们在某些子论坛上的活动和他们的下载活动。主要调查结果包括，虽然只有 3.4% 的成员交流活跃，但绝大多数 93.6% 的成员下载了 CSE 材料。结果表明，尽管口头上很活跃，但大多数成员确实参与了网站的内容，从而有效地影响了 CSE 社区。这对执法实践具有重要意义，我们将对此进行讨论。