New call for centre to probe web porn

Children’s charity Barnardo’s has again urged a national centre
staffed by child care workers and police to be set up to identify
children who have been abused for web pornography.

Figures released by the National Crime Squad, which is
co-ordinating Operation Ore to hunt internet paedophiles, show that
102 children in the UK have been saved from child abuse since the
investigation was launched in 2002.

But assistant chief constable Jim Gamble said: “The fact that more
than 100 children in the UK alone have been identified and removed
from areas of abuse is good news, but it is a statistic we cannot
celebrate.”

Chris Hanvey, UK director of operations for Barnardo’s, said:
“Unfortunately this represents just the tip of a large iceberg and
the vast number of abusers and offenders are still not being
caught.”

Police have been given no extra funding to carry out investigations
into more than 7,000 people who have accessed child pornography
online, and child protection is not prioritised within the national
policing plan.

The lack of resources and technological expertise has hampered
progress. In some cases a police force can take more than a year to
analyse a single computer.

Since the investigation started, more than 3,500 people have been
arrested, 1,670 of whom have been charged, and 1,230
convicted.

NCH internet adviser John Carr said there was a “substantial”
backlog of suspects who had not been investigated and urged the
government to make more resources available to “stamp out” child
pornography on the internet.