“He would be like ‘send me a picture of you with your uniform and lift up your skirt’ and I would tell him like ‘hey I feel very bad, and I feel very alone’ and it was like out of nowhere: ‘why haven’t I seen you naked?’” Conversation becomes coercion, and coercion becomes entrapment. A common thread across these experiences is the fear that something personal will be shared without permission. Shame, humiliation and the threat of consequences for family, relationships, or reputation are weaponized to silence children and continue the abuse. A young woman from Brazil describes how previous messages between her and the perpetrator were used as leverage to get her to comply with further demands: “He said ‘Here’s the deal, if you don’t send me a photo, I’ll go after your parents, I’ll go into your profile, I’ll look for your mother and I’ll send her screenshots of everything you say to me. Do you want that?’ And then I said ‘No, don’t do that, for God’s sake. Don’t do that because if my parents see this, my mother will be much angrier with me, and I’ll be much worse off.’” Too often, children tell no one at all. What may appear as outward silence often masks complex inner turmoil; it can be shaped by uncertainty, normalization of harm and deep anxiety over what might happen if they speak up. A young man from Montenegro, identifying as gay, explains why he chose not to tell anyone about receiving unwanted sexual content from older men: “I didn’t share that with anyone. I felt uncomfortable to share it, I was ashamed to share it. Now I’m not, now I can talk about it. But I think when you’re 15, and you’re still so insecure, you are ashamed, like, if I say that, what will people think of me? What will happen?” Through Children’s Eyes Introduction 7