The Guardian, Wednesday 4 March 2009
Article history
The number of child sex abuse websites in Europe has soared and the violence shown has become more extreme, the European commission and Europol, the European police agency, warned yesterday.
Jacques Barrot, EU commissioner for freedom, justice and security said Europe was facing "an extremely dramatic situation" after the number of child abuse websites increased fourfold between 2004 and 2007. At the launch of an international coalition to disrupt finances of the online child sex trade, he warned that organised criminal gangs were making an "indecent profit" for "horrific crimes against the most vulnerable people - children".
British police who tackle online child abuse and will lead the work of the European Financial Coalition said that up to 300 commercial child abuse websites were available at any one time and earnt well in excess of €30m (£26.8m) a year. Officers at the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) in London processed 1.6m images in the past year alone and identified and rescued 50 children.
"The ages of the victims are getting lower and lower and the degree of depravity is getting higher and higher," said Francis Herbert, secretary general of Missing Children Europe, which is part of the coalition. The Internet Watch Foundation has found that 10% of the children featuring in images of abuse are under two, a third are younger than six and 80% are under 10.
"The recent trend has been for more brutal images and severe torture of children," said Torbjorn Ull, a detective in Europol's serious crime department in Brussels. "If there is a demand for images of penetration or torture then they will produce it to order." Some images appeared to include killings, though it has been impossible for officers to verify.
The European commission yesterday announced a €17m investment in the "fight against the production, distribution and sale of child abuse images" and will set up a European alert system which will gather together all police reports of online abuse which will be crosschecked by Europol to provide evidence against the abusers and the criminal groups profiting from abuse.
The financial coalition includes Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, eBay and Microsoft, which are all involved in online payments. But Jim Gamble, chief executive of Ceop, said the involvement of organised criminals had diminished and he wants the coalition to help tackle file-sharing sites operated not by gangsters but by paedophiles who are motivated by their desires rather than profit.
"The organised crime element has diminished year on year as the risk increased and the profit reduced. Now we plan to eradicate the remnants of that industry once and for all," he said.
He said the number of non-profit sites had overtaken the number of pay-per-view sites and the financial coalition will attempt to follow the trails of money in these groups in the same way as counter-terror police investigate terror finance.
"These groups have more in common with terrorists who are driven by inherent belief rather than profit," he said.
