CEOP Annual Review

Recently, CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) released their Annual Review for 2008-2009. It makes interesting and impressive reading.

Headlines from the report include:

• 139 children have been safeguarded from sexual abuse either directly or indirectly as the result of CEOP activity, 20 of whom have been identified through the examination of child abuse images.
• 334 suspected child sex offenders have been arrested for offences ranging from possession of indecent images to rape, as a result of intelligence reports from CEOP and/or through the deployment of CEOP resources.
• 82 high risk sex offender networks have been disrupted or dismantled as a result of CEOP activity.
• 79 of the UK’s highest risk child sex offenders have been located as a direct result of the CEOP Centre’s UK and Overseas Tracker Teams.
• 5,686 intelligence reports have been received by the CEOP Centre – a culmination of reports through the public’s ‘report abuse’ mechanism, from the online and mobile industries and law enforcement partners in the UK and overseas.

These figures have all increased year on year since the Centre was established in 2006.

When talking to moderators who work on children's sites, we often hear that although the work is fun, challenging and rewarding, it can feel frustrating to not really know if they've truly helped a child. Approximately 11% of the reports made to CEOP come through industry. When that's added to the reports made to agencies in other countries, that makes for a significant number of potential cases and it's heartening to see that these reports are producing results.

Jim Gamble, CEOP's Chief Executive says, "we need to recognise, however, that the threat our children face is not about technology – it’s about people. When it comes to safeguarding, we should make no distinction between the offline and the online worlds.

It's all to easy to think of "online" as a whole separate mysterious universe. Yes, it's an environment that's exploited by paedophiles and yes, the methods of investigation and collection of evidence are different - but in the end, this is about people committing crimes against children and it's good to see some evidence that it's being handled.

The review contains a collection of case studies to demonstrate how the work of CEOP is producing results. As well as information about criminal investigations (eg Operation Elm), we learn how the work CEOP do in education has helped to bring perpetrators to justice.

One girl made a report after a police officer visited her school to deliver the ThinkUKnow education programme. This report resulted in the arrest of a man who had been chatting inappropriately with 40 other girls, and who possessed thousands of child abuse images.

We also learn about the work CEOP are doing to build capability overseas. For example they have established an Advisory Panel in Cambodia and seeking to replicate this in Vietnam and Thailand. This work increases mutual understanding of processes and needs - and leads to better tracking of travelling offenders. CEOP have worked with French authorities to share information on high risk child sexual offenders, and with Austrian and Czech authorities regarding a sex offender's register.

I'm very much looking forward to learning more at CEOP's Online Moderator's Conference next week, and will let you know how it goes.