Police ‘overwhelmed’ by child sex abuse image cases call for new approach as thousands of paedophiles seek help

Exclusive: Police chief suggests low-risk offenders should be left with cautions amid explosion in image offences

Police leaders have called for a new approach to the rising number of people who view child sex abuse images online, as thousands of paedophiles seek help to stop their behaviour.

At least 400 people are arrested over indecent images of children every month in England and Wales and record numbers of photos and videos are being reported.

Law enforcement agencies are struggling to cope with cases, prompting the government to support programmes aiming to rehabilitate convicted paedophiles or prevent them offending.

One charity has been contacted by more than 5,000 people seeking help to stop viewing child sex abuse images. The charity has seen record visits to its support website.

Chief Constable Simon Bailey, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for child protection, said officers want to focus on suspects in direct contact with children but are being “overwhelmed” by lower-level image offences.

“We have always been clear that we can’t arrest our way out of this problem,” he told The Independent.

“We are not able to target the high-risk and high harm offenders because we are overwhelmed with volume referrals, therefore something has to change.

“That change needs to be a cross-system approach including educating children at home and school about the risks online, ensuring tech companies deliver on their responsibilities to prevent the uploading and sharing of images, and applying conditional cautions to low-risk offenders whereby they have to confront their offending behaviour.”

The Lucy Faithfull Foundation, a child abuse prevention charity, is among those running programmes for people wanting to stop viewing indecent images.

Its phone helpline has been contacted by more than 5,000 paedophiles in three years for confidential advice.

In 2018, its self-help website had a record of almost 41,000 visitors and the helpline received more than 2,000 calls by people with concerns either about their own behaviour or a loved one.

Lisa Thornhill, a child sexual abuse expert at the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, said that many of those calling “aren’t who you might expect”.

“They’re people from all walks of life, all different backgrounds, they’ve got families,” she added.

“A lot of people who speak to us are deeply distressed, sometimes suicidal.”

Ms Thornhill said the fear of being labelled a paedophile and ostracised made people unwilling to discuss their online behaviour, but that there were a “range of motivations” for viewing child sex abuse images.

The National Crime Agency estimates that around 80,000 people in the UK regularly view images of child sexual abuse online (Getty/iStock)

“Some men say they’ve been looking at pornography for a long time and they’ve become desensitised, so start looking for more and more extreme images,” she said.

“People tell us that they enter this state online of feeling like they’re anonymous, like they’ll never get caught. They convince themselves that other people are looking at these images and they’re not doing any harm.”

The charity’s prevention programmes aim to stop reoffending by teaching men about the abuse behind the images, and the real-world suffering of every child featured in them throughout their lives.

John’s experience

A man in his 30s who was convicted for child sex abuse images after using a peer-to-peer programme to download pornography

“There was a vast range of disturbing imagery. Nude, sexual, abusive images of children. There were also other things like sexualised violence, there was a lot of very graphic self-mutilation videos, anything designed to shock and disgust was on there. When you’re accessing things digitally, it’s easier to disassociate yourself from the reality of what’s going on behind the pictures.

“There were some indecent images that I was using for gratification and there were lots I was accessing as an unfortunate side-effect of downloading massive volumes of files on a daily basis – ones that I wouldn’t have any interest in but would still be coming into contact with.

“For the images I was using, my attitude was ‘all the people in these images look at least 16 or more, so it’s probably all legal and above board. It’s produced professionally so there’s nothing wrong with it’.

“That would be a good way of me saying ‘I’m sure nothing negative has happened to the people in these images’. But there’s obviously a lot of images you come into contact with where either the children are very young and it’s obviously an abusive thing happening, or something physically is being done to them and you know it’s abuse.

“My attitude to those ones was ‘I never directly set out to find these images, I’m not using them, I haven’t paid for them, so I don’t have any moral responsibility’. I realise differently now but that was my attitude at the time.”

Ms Thornhill said it was now “incredibly easy to find child sex abuse images” online, warning: “In the past people might have had a fleeting thought about children but I think having such easy access to these images has provided a catalyst.”

While acknowledging that the idea of rehabilitating paedophiles is controversial, she said it was possible.

“We would never say that someone would be ‘cured’ [but they can] alter lifestyle and manage risks,” Ms Thornhill added.

The Lucy Faithfull Foundation has been granted £600,000 in Home Office funding and in March, Sajid Javid gave the charity his full support, adding: “It’s vital we take action against child sexual abuse on a number of fronts.”

The National Crime Agency estimates that around 80,000 people in the UK are regularly viewing images of child sexual abuse online and director Rob Jones has called for a “wider approach”.

“Helping offenders to stop is really important, but it is absolutely crucial to help potential offenders before they even begin looking at the sexual abuse of children online,” he said earlier this year.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which took action against a record 105,000 pages that contained millions of images last year, said: “Anything that stops people viewing this material is a good thing.”

IWF chief executive Susie Hargreaves told The Independent that research showed men aged between 16 and 25 were most likely to “stumble across” images of children online.

“There are different levels of abuse with different implications for society,” she added. “You cannot put everyone in prison, we need as a society to find other solutions.”