‘Silent epidemic’ of online child abuse surging follow pandemic

A “silent epidemic” of live-streamed child abuse is surging in the wake of the pandemic and the UK must do more to tackle it, a senior Interpol official has warned.

Millions of children worldwide are being sexually abused to order via live-video streams, much of which is conducted out of the Philippines but directed by British and American paedophiles. Other hotspot countries include Colombia and Thailand.

Stephen Kavanagh, Executive Director of Police Services at Interpol, told The Telegraph that cases had grown since the pandemic and that the numbers “almost overwhelms us”.

He also warned that the “set-up for conventional law enforcement” is not designed to deal with crimes in which the victims are “on the other side of the world”.

Mr Kavanagh, who is standing as the UK candidate to be Interpol’s next Secretary General, said: “We have to take more responsibility – governments, tech companies, law enforcement – because the level of harm can’t continue at the level it is without some type of global response.”

Victims, predominantly Filipino, range in age from just two months old through to 18 and, for as little as $25, will be subject to abuse on a daily basis.

Western guilt

The vast majority of demand for this type of online child sexual exploitation originates in the West, Mr Kavanagh said.

In Britain, an estimated 1.4 per cent of the male population has engaged in a sexually explicit webcam interaction with a child, according to research from the University of Edinburgh, equivalent to more than 450,000 men.

In Australia, this percentage stands at 1.8; in America, it’s more than twice as high, at 4.2 per cent, the research shows.

On Tuesday, MPs, campaigners and officials from the National Crime agency are meeting in Westminster to discuss this exploitation and how Britain can help better fight it.

The event’s chair, Labour’s Sarah Champion, told The Telegraph that such abuse is “escalating exponentially”.

“The police simply don’t have the capacity to address this horrendous crime which means across the planet vulnerable hundreds of thousands of children are being horrifically exploited,” she said.

Those facilitating the exploitation are usually known to the children; they may be neighbours, friends and family members, including uncles, aunts, siblings and even parents. Some 41 per cent of victims in the Philippines are abused by their mother or father, research says.

To communicate with the traffickers and watch the live streaming of abuse, offenders used a range of online platforms, including Skype, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp.

Research from the IJM suggests that as many as 500,000 Filipino children – or one in every 100 – are being sexually abused via live video streams.

Duty of care

Critics and campaigners say that the technology to tackle this crime is available and could be installed on all phones as a condition of sale.

In Britain, the cyber-security company SafeToNet has developed an AI-taught software that can be installed onto a device’s internal operating system and blocks child sexual content, regardless of its source.

“I am absolutely for maintaining privacy,” said Mr Kavanagh. “But there’s a duty of care that we all have to say that the combating abuse of babies demands the use of technologies and algorithms that ensure blocks are being put in place on social media platforms.”

Mr Kavanagh said he wants to see Western nations “take [more] responsibility” for the cross-border abuse being dictated by their citizens against foreign children.

“The fact that there is no child in a jurisdiction in Europe, or the US, does not mean the police should not be taking responsibility for those people who are causing such dreadful harms,” he said.

He suggested a more “sustainable” approach was needed – one in which international resources, funding and training are provided to overseas police forces in regions like Southeast Asia or Latin America, equipping them with the means to one day launch their own investigations into trafficking rings, without constant help from the West.