Child sexual abuse is a global public health crisis. But it doesn’t have to be. Thorn is on a mission to create a world where every child can simply be a kid.
As an innovative child safety nonprofit, we create cutting-edge technology, conduct original research, and foster collaborative partnerships that combat child sexual abuse at scale.
20,000+
donors
85+employees
60+Safer customers
700+law enforcement agencies using Thorn tools
At Thorn, we put technology to work each day to enhance child safety. Thanks to a combination of donor support and earned revenue, we can focus our efforts across four key pillars to protect children in the digital age:
Because abusers take advantage of new technology to exploit children, we need to gain a deeper understanding of what children experience and perceive today. These critical insights are crucial for increasing public awareness and equipping platforms, policymakers, and investigators with actionable intelligence to better respond to digital threats.
Our world-class machine learning engineers build powerful tech that keeps pace with emerging harms. We scale child protection through an iterative development process, innovating technology to respond to new and emerging threats like grooming, sextortion, and AI-generated CSAM. These technologies are then used in our law enforcement and platform safety products to help find child victims faster and make the internet safer.
Victim identification is a needle-in-a-haystack problem for investigators. We develop victim identification tools to help find child victims faster and remove them from harm.
To achieve the goal of creating safer online environments, building safer content-hosting platforms is critically important. To make the internet an unwelcoming place for abuse, we equip technology companies with purpose-built solutions to help stop the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and reduce revictimization. To date, Thorn has helped the tech industry detect over 6 million suspected child sexual abuse files on the open web.
Thorn is a leader in the child safety space – and we’re helping the world understand what it takes to protect children.
How we can eliminate child sexual abuse material from the internet
Julie Cordua — TED Talk
6 min read
26 min read
Every person who works for Thorn shares a commitment to do this challenging work of protecting children. Build your career as you help build a world where every child is free to simply be a kid. See open positions and learn more about our employee experience.
Ernie Allen
Global Expert on Child Protection. Founding Chairman, WeProtect Global Alliance
Suzanne Bell
Partner, Covington & Burling
Vanessa Kanu
CFO, AptarGroup
Sara Clemens
Interim Chair
Julie Cordua
CEO, Thorn
Neelie Kroes
Former VP, the European Commission
Mike Abbott
Lecturer/Executive/Investor/ Founder
John Bennett
Assistant Director FBI, Retired
We appreciate the contribution of our co-founders Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore to Thorn’s mission.
Change is possible when we come together as a community. With your support, we can protect more children and work faster to build a world we believe in.
