Net closes in on child predators

IT'S every parent's worst nightmare; the thought that your child could have been targeted by a predatory paedophile.

The growth of the internet suddenly brought that fear much closer to home.

For the first time, parents realised their children could be reached even while apparently safe at home, in their own room.

Now a new national taskforce has been set up specifically to tackle child sex abuse - and in particular online pornography and internet grooming.

The London-based Child Exploitation And Online Protection Centre (CEOP for short), which will have a budget of £5 million a year, will have links with crime-fighting organisations around the world and access to the very latest computer technology to help it stay one step ahead of online perverts. It will adopt a range of new tactics to crack down on child sex abuse - including posting mugshots of convicted paedophiles who have absconded from supervision on the internet to warn children and parents, and tracking financial transactions to catch those benefiting from child porn.

It will also launch hard-hitting education programmes and public awareness campaigns.

The new unit's chief executive, Jim Gamble, wasted no time setting out his stall yesterday - pledging CEOP meant business and would press ahead with controversial measures such as posting mugshots.

"If the risk is high, we need to consider new and perhaps constructively aggressive measures before they harm a child in the community," Mr Gamble said.

For too long, he insisted, paedophiles had thought they could get away with hiding behind the anonymity of the internet.

"We were playing catch-up all the time. (But) the information superhighway is no different from any other public place.

"Now, when the criminal gets the next version of software, the industry that invents it will have already delivered that technology to us."

Police and children's charities in York today welcomed the launch of the new centre.

Det Insp Jon Reed, of York CID, said it was vital those fighting internet child sex crime had global reach.

Operation Ore, the international effort to track internet paedophiles, had been a success, he said. "But we do need to take the next step. This is a global problem. Internet child pornography does not have any boundaries."

Mary Marsh, national director and chief executive of children's charity the NSPCC, which has a centre in York, said: "This is a major step forward in tackling online child abuse and child exploitation. As technology is rapidly developing we must work together to stay one step ahead of the abusers."

There were concerns about civil liberties, however. Frank Ormston of the York branch of the Respect party, said there was a risk of vigilante attacks if photographs of paedophiles were posted on the internet.

"And if somebody who is perfectly innocent happens to have a vague resemblance to someone whose photograph has been posted, they could end up being targeted by mistake," he said.

'Being targeted as a child wrecked my trust in adults'

ONE of the worst things about being sexually abused as a child is that it destroys your ability to trust.

Sharon Tate, who courageously spoke out in court earlier this year about being repeatedly raped and sexually abused by her stepfather when she was just ten years old, said it left her feeling dirty and shamed.

Sharon didn't dare tell her mum or anyone she knew, because her stepfather threatened her. "I knew it should not have been happening," she says. "But he said bad things would happen to my mum if I told, and that I would be sent to a children's home or he would stop me from seeing my real dad."

But it was her ability to trust people that was really damaged, she says. "Because you don't know who you are trusting."

The abuse also affected her ability to form relationships, Sharon says.

She has been with her husband, Mark, since she was 13. "I have got a very good relationship with him, but I think I have to work at relationships more because of what has happened. I don't think I would be able to get into another relationship."

Sharon, who is now 33 and works for Norwich Union, in York, actually told Mark when she was 15 that she had been sexually abused - though she didn't go into details.

"I felt ashamed and dirty," she says. "I was embarking on what was hopefully a long-term relationship and before anything happened I felt he needed to know."

Mark wanted her to tell someone - but Sharon always refused. Until, after trying for a baby with Mark for 13 years, she became pregnant with daughter Caitlin through IVF treatment in 2004. When her half brother - her step-father's son - also had a baby with his partner in 2005, she knew she had to speak out, in case the same thing happened again.

Her mother hasn't spoken to her since - and Sharon admits she found the ensuing court case hugely stressful. She had to take medication for depression.

But since her stepfather was jailed for ten years in March, and despite the fact she no longer has any contact with her mum, she admits she now feels better.

"I have protected my daughter," she says. "And he (her stepfather) has got what he deserves."

Sharon admits that when her own daughter, now 17 months, grows up, she might find it difficult not to be over-protective. "I'm not going to lie to her," she says.

"But when she's older I've got to let her go and make her own mistakes. God forbid anything will happen to her."

Crackdown on paedophiles

JIM GAMBLE, the boss of the new Child Exploitation And Online Protection Centre, says it will adopt a "range of new tactics" to crack down on paedophiles who use the internet to prey on youngsters.

"We will be targeting them in ways that we never have before, using joined-up intelligence processes that we have never had before," he said.

The new centre will for the first time bring together police, child protection specialists from children's charities, and experts from technology companies such as Microsoft together under one roof, combining this with global connections.

Methods the centre plans to use to crack down on child sex abuse include:

- Posting mugshots of abusers who have run away from supervision on the internet, so as to warn children and parents

- Using victim identification technology and analysing images to get a handle on where and when child pornography was made

- Linking in to the Virtual Global Taskforce, an international alliance of law enforcement agencies, to develop global reach

- Tracking financial transactions made by paedophiles in the same way as is common with organised crime. "If you book a trip to Cambodia, we're going to know," Mr Gamble said

- Running a 24-hour service to follow up reports of child sex offending, whether over the internet or not

- Developing educational materials aimed at helping children use the internet safely

Help at hand for youngsters

SEXUAL abuse of a child can have a devastating effect on the child itself - and on the parents, says Debra Radford, of the NSPCC, in York.

Just how much of an effect depends on who is doing the abusing - whether it is a parent, other family member, someone known to the family or a stranger - and how old the child is. Typical symptoms of a child who is being abused can include sleep problems, nightmares, bed-wetting - and problems at school. "They might start not doing so well at school - or you do get children who do extremely well at school suddenly."

In the worst cases, a child can feel suicidal, Debra says.

The most important thing is that a child should be able to find someone they can talk to quickly. That can be difficult, especially if the abuser is a family member. Abusers also typically threaten a child. But there are people for children to turn to, Debra says. Schools have counsellors - and the NSPCC has a freephone Childline number, 0800 1111, which children can ring. There is also a confidential website - www.there4me.com - to which teenagers can turn for help.

The best thing parents can do, Debra says, is ensure they have a relationship with their children in which the child feels able to talk to them about anything.

As long as the child knows he or she is believed and loved, that can help.

Child sex abuse and the world-wide web

CHILD pornography is not a new phenomenon.

But the growth of the internet means that it is now much more widely available than a few years ago, Det Insp Jon Reed, of York CID, says.

It is not a victimless crime. For every photograph, there is a real, live victim, DI Reed says.

And anyone who looks at child pornography, on the internet or elsewhere, helps to fuel the trade in such images.

"Not only are those people doing it for their own sexual gratification, but there is also some profit to be made out of this," he says. "Anyone who looks at those images gives the people who profit from them a reason to carry on."

One of the most shocking aspects about Operation Ore, he adds, was that it revealed the full extent of the way in which the internet could be used to "groom" vulnerable young people.

Figures show up to eight million children and young people have access to the internet throughout the UK.

And parents have a responsibility to at least be aware of the way in which their children are using the internet, DI Reed says.

It is part of ordinary teenage behaviour not always to want to tell your parents what you are getting up to online, he accepts.

But the odd discreet question need not be overly intrusive.

Updated: 10:15 Tuesday, April 25, 2006