Worst child abuse images quadruple online in three years

The number of images of serious child abuse online has quadrupled over three years, according to figures from Britain's internet watchdog published today.

The Internet Watch Foundation says the most distressing grade of images account for nearly a third of all reports of child pornography it receives.

The statistics paint a disturbing picture of growth in hardcore child abuse pictures for sale online. In 2003, just 7% of the web pages investigated by the group included the highest levels of abuse. Last year the group says that 29% of all the images that its officers investigated fell under the same classification, marking a fourfold rise in the most disturbing cases.

Peter Robbins, the IWF's chairman, said the figures demonstrated an increasing appetite among internet paedophiles for the most severe sorts of imagery, while sites selling abusive pictures and videos appeared to be turning to increasingly hardcore material in order to fend off competitors.

"The images appear to be on a trend towards more severity, probably because there is greater demand," Mr Robbins told the Guardian.

"The age of the children involved is predominantly under 12, and the commercial sites where these images are being sold are staying up for long periods."

Last year the IWF processed 31,776 reports of illegal images on the internet - up from 24,000 in 2005. The material was hosted on more than 3,000 websites.

While less than 1% of the original material was traced back to Britain, 82% of all the images it investigated were hosted on websites in Russia or the US, creating serious fears over the possibility of child trafficking and industrial-level abuse.

Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said although the figures were of great concern, they represented "dramatic and continued progress" in Britain's approach to online abuse. In recent years sentencing guidelines have changed to longer terms for internet sex offences, and those caught grooming children online now face up to 10 years in prison.

The IWF also operates a blacklist that prevents many web users from accessing known abuse sites, although problems with overcrowded jails have recently allowed some convicted of downloading child pornography to avoid a custodial sentence. One expert said greater international cooperation was needed to close down such websites completely.

"There's no doubt that half of the problem is the weakness of international institutions," said John Carr, internet safety expert for the children's charity NCH. "Interpol, Europol, the G8 and the UN could all step up - but none of them have the political will."

Mr Robbins said that many of the sites were run by organised criminal groups, and their other activities were often of greater concern to police. The foundation, formed in 1997, is now the self-regulating body in charge of finding and removing illegal images from the internet in Britain.

Since it launched a decade ago with the support of the government, law enforcement agencies and the internet industry, it has seen reports of abusive images increase drastically.

Although much of the growth is down to the wider availability of the internet in homes around the world, police investigating online abuse are finding that criminals are discovering new ways to connect or develop contact with each other.

"One of the sick things they'll do is film the abuse and actually stick little notes on the child's body with the names of the other person who they are sending it to," said Tom Simmons, intelligence team leader at the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre (Ceop), a branch of the Serious and Organised Crime Squad dedicated to combating child abuse. "Or sometimes you'll just see the kids saying 'Jan and John say hi to whoever', and that's upsetting because you know that child is going to get abused."

Although big chunks of police time have been dedicated to tracking down those who download the images, police believe they must dedicate more time to discovering the producers, not just the buyers and distributors.

"What we've got to do is look at this like narcotics, in a way," said Lewis Hunt, Ceop's intelligence group leader. "It's very easy to concentrate on the consumers, but the difficulty is that we have to look back at particular websites and people who are producing child abuse images, and that is a really difficult thing to trace."

Earlier this year Ceop uncovered "one of the largest paedophile rings in the world", with around 300 members worldwide, leading to the rescue of eight children. In February it emerged that 29 Britons were under investigation after Austrian police discovered 2,300 individuals using a paedophile website based in Russia.

Guardian