A year of high impact as
UK centre for tackling child sex abuse delivers step change in
protecting children
CHILD EXPLOITATION
AND ONLINE PROTECTION CENTRE News Release issued by The Government
News Network on 11 June 2007
* 76 CHILDREN
RESCUED FROM ABUSIVE ENVIRONMENTS
* 83 CHILD SEX OFFENDERS
ARRESTED
* 12 OF THE UK'S HIGHEST RISK CHILD SEX
OFFENDERS LOCATED
* OVER 750,000 CHILDREN ATTENDED THINKUKNOW
EDUCATION SESSIONS IN UK SCHOOLS
Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre launches
its first year figures and lays out the challenge ahead
Seventy-six (76) children from across the UK have been rescued
from sexual abuse environments by officers working with the Child
Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre during its first
12 months of operation.
Add to that the arrests of 83 child sex offenders and the
dismantlement and disruption of 3 major international paedophile
rings - all with UK connections - as the battle against child sex
abuse gathers pace.
In all, over 2,500 reports have been made to the CEOP Centre
since its launch in April 2006. During the same period the
organisation has made around 1000 disseminations - many with
multiple suspects - to local and international forces.
In a groundbreaking approach for the UK, the CEOP Centre has also
delivered ThinkUKnow education training to over 750,000 UK school
children with sessions looking at online internet safety. 1
million will have attended by the end of the academic year.
The CEOP Centre is unique in that within one organisation police
officers specialising in tackling child sex abuse are working with
staff seconded in from major corporations such as Microsoft and
leading children's charities including the National Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).
Its mandate, first and foremost, is child protection: Enpower,
Protect, Enforce. This includes using a multitude of resources to
focus on high risk, high impact offenders.
A totally holistic approach is now being delivered including
award winning safety sessions for children (ThinkuKnow),
specialist training for child protection professionals (1500
attended last year) through to the development of safer by design
initiatives (Report Abuse button within MSN Messenger) and
ultimately the investigation and arrest of offenders (with 36
major operational deployments during the year).
The CEOP Centre's approach is now being studied by a number
of countries with international visitors from law enforcement,
government, child protection and industry from as far away as
South East Asia, Australia and other parts of Europe.
Jim Gamble, is Chief Executive of the CEOP Centre:
"Back in April 2006 when we launched the CEOP Centre I said
that we would change the internet from the anonymous place that
some offenders thought it would be. I outlined how we would
provide young people with a direct and dedicated Report Abuse
function where they could report deviant activities within a few
clicks of a mouse and I said that we would publish details of
registered offenders on a website if they failed to fulfil the
consequences of their convictions.
"These figures speak for themselves. What they mean is that
any offender looking to groom a child today online stands a good
chance of grooming an undercover officer instead. If not that,
then that offender may be speaking online to one of the 750,000
children we have now educated through ThinkuKnow and who know how
to spot deviant behaviour and how to report it to us. Now that is
a massive deterrent.
"Not only that but we have turned technology on to those who
often look to exploit it to access and exploit children. We have
the online Report Abuse mechanism - now receiving an increasing
number of reports from young people under the age of 18 years and
- we have gone further by posting details of missing offenders
online. In addition, 5 of the first 8 individuals posted on Most
Wanted (ceop.gov.uk/wanted) have been located and arrested.
"This is just one year of activity - our very first year.
Now we move on. We have to look at the scale of this issue as in
only one operation alone over 1,000 lines of enquiry relating to
UK suspects were passed to us from our US counterparts. That is a
massive task not only for the CEOP Centre, but UK policing in
general, and we will do all we can to keep our collective foot
firmly down on the pedal as we motor forward.
"But we don't move forward blindly. Far from it! Today
we also launched our first strategic threat assessment into online
child sex abuse - the first of its kind here in the UK. It
collates all the information and intelligence we have gleamed
during our first year of business - from industry, the public, the
wider child protection community, government, the police and wider
criminal justice system and from partners abroad - to build the
first composite picture of the challenge we face.
"That shows us - and this particular piece of information
comes from initial analysis of around 6,000 children who attended
our ThinkuKnow sessions - that 1 in 4 of them are meeting people
offline who they initially engaged with online - 83% of them
taking a friend along and therefore putting more children at risk.
This is backed up by analysis of our reporting mechanism that
shows online chat and instant messenger are still the most
reported area of abuse and that grooming is the most frequently
reported activity.
"What is more our intelligence is showing us that online
gaming sites and mobile social networking areas are the new areas
on the map where potential threat to children exists, while the
explosion of sites encouraging the production of self-generated
material means that more and more children are putting themselves
at risk by pushing the boundaries of what they are posting. We are
not against these sites - far from it - but making them safer by
design is critical.
"So my message is simple. The world is becoming increasingly
hostile to child sex offenders. We will track you, we will arrest
you and you will be held to account. Why? Because more and more
people are saying enough is enough - sectors are working together,
children and parents are becoming more alert and those combined
resources are more intelligent about how you operate. That is what
the CEOP Centre set out to achieve. Our results speak for themselves."
Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said:
"We are glad to see that the CEOP Centre is concentrating on
its core activity of child protection. In a time of technological
advances and greater computer use we are pleased with the
organisation's ongoing success in protecting children through
empowerment and bringing to justice those that prey on one of the
most vulnerable groups in society".
Notes to Editors
1. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre is
a law enforcement agency and works in both online and offline
environments. Full information on all areas of work as well as
online safety messages and access to online reporting can be found
at http://www.ceop.gov.uk or
for children at http://www.thinkuknow.net.
PDF versions of both the CEOP Centre's Annual Review and
Strategic Overview are available on the site.
2. The CEOP Centre also represents the UK on the Virtual Global
Taskforce (VGT) - an international alliance of law enforcement
agencies dedicated to tackling child sex abuse with partners from
the US, Australia, Canada, the UK (represented by CEOP) and
Interpol bringing in another 184 international jurisdictions.
Further information can be found at http://www.virtualglobaltaskforce.com.
3. Members of the public can register to receive updates on when
new convicted child sex offenders are posted online by the CEOP
Centre by visiting http://www.ceop.gov.uk/wanted.