- "The British internet industry has clamped down
on paedophile sites but images continue to flood in from abroad - especially
the United States from where half of all child pornography comes."
-
- The growth of the internet has created a 1,500 per cent
rise in child pornography offences, according to a study of the link between
computers and paedophile crime published today.
-
- Between 1988 and 2001 the number of people prosecuted
or cautioned in England and Wales for making or possessing indecent images
of children rose from 35 to 549.
-
- The figures do not include the results of Operation Ore,
a nationwide investigation launched in 2002 into 6,500 British subscribers
to an American network of child pornography websites.
-
- That inquiry has led so far to more than 2,300 arrests
with 732 people charged. A further 38 people - including Pete Townshend,
the guitarist with The Who - have been cautioned and many more arrests
will follow.
-
- The volume of indecent material uncovered by police and
other agencies has also soared - particularly with the advent of digital
cameras.
-
- In 1995 Greater Manchester Police seized 12 examples
of child pornography - all either on paper or video. Four years later,
with the internet still in its infancy, the same force seized 41,000 images
- all but three of them held on computers.
-
- Last year in Britain a man was convicted of possessing
450,000 indecent images of children while another offender was found to
have 250,000 images on his computer.
-
- While many of the images in circulation among paedophiles
are duplicated and some are up to 30 years old, there is evidence that
organised criminal gangs in Europe, Asia and the United States are now
involved in expanding the trade in child pornography.
-
- Research by the University of Cork into paedophile newsgroups
shows that more children are being abused to feed the demand for internet
pornography.
-
- In 1999, the Cork unit found four new children appearing
each month in abusive images posted on the newsgroups. By mid-2002 a study
of the same newsgroups found images of 20 new children appearing in a six-week
period.
-
- The researchers report that the abuse the children were
being subjected to was increasingly sadistic.
-
- The new report - which for the first time draws together
research on paedophile internet crime - is written by John Carr, an internet
consultant with the children's charity NCH and a Home Office adviser.
-
- "An amazing number of people have never accepted
any link between the development of the internet and the increase in child
pornography and the consequent abuse of children," said Mr Carr.
-
- "The numbers speak for themselves. The scale of
the problem has changed beyond recognition in just over a decade."
-
- An increasing area of concern for police and campaigners
is the link between internet pornography and incidents of child abuse.
-
- British police are tracking offenders to establish any
connection but the largest available study - conducted by the US Postal
Inspection Service - found that 35 per cent of men arrested for possessing
indecent images were also child molesters.
-
- Mr Carr said everyone found in possession of child abuse
images should be investigated to see if they had abused children in the
past and assessed to determine if they posed a future risk.
-
- The British internet industry has clamped down on paedophile
sites but images continue to flood in from abroad - especially the United
States from where half of all child pornography comes.
-
- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2004.
-
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/12/npaed12
.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/12/ixhome.html
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