20,000 British men interested in sexually abusing children

Chief Constable Simon Bailey, who leads the National Police Chiefs’ Council on child protection, admitted that officers would never have enough capacity to solve what he described as the ‘wicked problem’

Thousands more police officers would still not be enough to stem the epidemic of child sexual abuse, Britain’s top officer on child protection warned yesterday.

Chief Constable Simon Bailey, who leads the National Police Chiefs’ Council on child protection, admitted that officers would never have enough capacity to solve what he described as the ‘wicked problem’ as he estimated that the number of British men interested in sexually abusing children stands more than 20,000.

That figure is comparable to the total number of all current and former terrorism suspects in the UK, he said.

The Norfolk police chief said investigators monitoring a single online chatroom in 2017 identified 4,000 men using it from the UK alone.

He admitted police were having to ignore lower level offenders to prioritise the most dangerous predators because there aren’t enough officers to pursue all child sex abusers.

Even if thousands more detectives were tasked, police still would not bring every offender to justice.

He said: ‘There are hundreds of officers tackling this now.

‘Thousands and thousands still would not be enough.

‘This is one of those wicked problems we simply cannot arrest our way out of.’

He said officers were having to ignore ‘lower-level’ offenders because of limited resources: ‘We are having to prioritise the threat.

‘Some lower-level offenders cannot be arrested and taken to court. There is just not the capacity.’

Chief Constable Bailey said police were having to ignore lower level offenders to prioritise the most dangerous predators because there aren’t enough officers to pursue all child sex abusers. File photo

Chief Constable Bailey said police were having to ignore lower level offenders to prioritise the most dangerous predators because there aren’t enough officers to pursue all child sex abusers. File photo

Mr Bailey blamed social media giants for affording paedophiles an access to children through live streaming as he called for a fresh crackdown from tech companies on the use of platforms including Periscope, which is owned by Twitter, and Facebook Live.

‘I believe there are tens of thousands of men that are now going into chatrooms and forums with a view to grooming children,’ he told the Guardian.

‘Technology has afforded an access to children that people who have a sexual interest in children never had before.’

He said: ‘I think there is more sexual abuse of children being perpetrated both physically and virtually.

‘There are more men than five to 10 years ago who are trying to abuse children. There are more men viewing imagery and asking kids to flash.

‘Viewing an image is abusing a child.’

On the emerging issue of live streaming child abuse, Bailey urged tech companies to do more: ‘Software providers have a critical role in policing the environment they create.

‘They have a social and moral responsibility to make their platforms safe for children to use.’

His warning came after recent reports revealed that child sexual abuse is at a record level.

Earlier this month, the NSPCC child protection charity said there had been a 31 per cent increase in the number of reported cases of child sexual abuse in the UK on the previous year.

His warning came after recent reports revealed that child sexual abuse is at a record level. File photo

Mr Bailey said reports to child protection experts were up 700 per cent since October 2013, although some put that increase down to a greater willingness to report offences.

In the first 11 months of 2017, the National Crime Agency received 72,000 referrals about online child sexual abuse imagery, up from 6,000 in 2010.

The police chief said the children being targeted were not just those from broken homes where the parents or the adults in charge were neglectful.

‘The victims have included children of very capable and very caring parents.

‘It does not recognise social status. The victims include children of middle-class, educated parents who think they are internet-savvy,’ he said.

He estimated that about half of parents warned their children about the dangers of the internet, but said it needed to be constantly reinforced both at home and at school, adding: ‘We need the same warnings about sexual abuse in schools, in the same way as we do for terrorism.

‘Young people need to be educated about the risks, and spot the signs of exploitation and have the confidence to report it.’

He added that most offenders across all categories of child sexual abuse were white, despite numerous recent prosecutions of Asian street-grooming gangs. 



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