Child sexual abuse in the UK is increasing rapidly, police have reported, with 1,000 paedophile suspects being arrested each month and the number of children being rescued from harm rising by 50% in the last five years.
The National Crime Agency stated that the increase in offenses across the UK was driven by technology and linked to the radicalisation of offenders in online forums, encouraging people to view images of child sexual abuse by reassuring them it was normal.
Most contact with children occurred on mainstream social media platforms, with algorithms promoting paedophilic material to people who have previously shown interest in it.
The substantial increase in all metrics “really worries us,” said Rob Jones, the NCA’s director general of operations.
Leads on people interested in sexually abusing children had increased tenfold in a decade, he noted, with 1,200 children a month being protected.
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Jones added that the majority of abuse images were “known images” that had circulated for some time, and that tech companies had the ability to stop them.
“The threat is getting worse, despite our best efforts… There is more access to children online,” he said.
“Children are more reliant on the internet, and we see offenders moving to collaborate and coordinate activities on the dark web, while using the open web as a discovery platform to identify and abuse vulnerable children.”
Police were “racing” to reach the worst offenders, who were in positions of trust or had access to children, accounting for 15% of over 33,000 leads last year.
Jones said potential offenders were introduced to material by algorithms, and forums told people interested in the sexual abuse of children that they were not criminals.
“I think, societally, things have changed … If you enter an online forum with a sexual interest in children, you’ll be told that you are normal.
“Due to the way algorithms connect people with similar interests, and the way people operate, they will be told that what they are doing is normal, it will be rationalised, normalised, and then almost a radicalisation process happens where their behavior is encouraged, and they are told everything they’ve been told before is wrong, is actually the opposite.”
Last week, a former London nursery worker, Vincent Chan, was jailed for 18 years for child sex offenses, including sexually abusing toddlers in his care, and offenses at a primary school where he was previously employed.
On Tuesday, Joao-Carlos Jardim Dos Santos Teixeira, 26, from Eastbourne, was jailed for 11 years for sharing and discussing child sexual abuse material, including AI-generated images.
Jones mentioned that offenders were “determined” and had adapted to avoid detection, but that technology companies could and should do more. “In the last five years, we’ve repeatedly said that the use of technology is increasing opportunities for child sex offenders, and the risk to children and young people,” he remarked. “We have seen some improvements by tech companies, but it’s nowhere near what’s actually needed to protect children in this era.”
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There is an underlying frustration in UK law enforcement about the perceived lack of action by tech companies while children suffer, tempered by the necessity of their cooperation for the tens of thousands of leads officers receive every year.
Jones said images already circulating, which account for the majority of such abuse, could be identified by tech companies and removed. “They could stop a lot more. So if you have an unencrypted environment where AI is used to detect known images, that is the low-hanging fruit that we should expect to no longer be available on the open web, and that is something we’ve talked about extensively for many, many years: that technology is available, it’s detectable, and it can be taken down. So we should no longer find known images.”
The Online Safety Act, while helpful, was not sufficient, according to police.
“You can’t have a world where children aren’t protected, and that is the challenge with the open web,” Jones said. “Currently, there aren’t enough protective measures in place, although progress is being made toward a regulated environment, it’s not happening quickly enough to contain this.”
Becky Riggs, the acting chief constable for Staffordshire police and the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for child protection and abuse investigation, mentioned some platforms were better than others, and the number of referrals was rising despite the growth of end-to-end encryption, which means activity cannot be monitored.
“Every victim of this type of crime faces unimaginable consequences, often lifelong and, sadly in the online realm, often relived as images are shared across a network of individuals.”
Jones stated a proposed ban on under 16s using social media was “not a silver bullet” and the NCA reported that livestreamed sexual abuse of children could be purchased online and on-demand for as little as £20.
Police said there was no typical offender, and previously it had been estimated that up to 840,000 adults in the UK had a sexual interest in children.
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