660 arrested in police blitz on child abusers

 
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A total of 660 suspected paedophiles have been arrested across Britain in the biggest police operation of its kind, it was revealed today.

Detectives seized suspects including doctors, teachers, care workers, scout leaders and ex-police officers in a six-month crackdown. Police say they have protected or “safeguarded” 431 children, many of whom were at immediate risk from suspects. Some of these suspects had unsupervised access to children in the course of their work.

The operation, codenamed Notarise, was co-ordinated by the National Crime Agency and involved searches of 833 homes and offices across the UK. Police said they seized nearly 10,000 phones and computers. The agency stressed that none of those arrested was a serving or former MP or member of the Government. The majority had no previous history of sex offending.

NCA deputy director Phil Gormley said: “We believe this is the biggest operation of its type in the history of UK law enforcement. Our aim was to protect children who were victims of, or may be at risk of, sexual exploitation.

“A child is victimised not only when abused and an image is taken. A child is re-victimised every time that image is viewed by someone.”

He added: “There are very significant volumes of people viewing this material in this country and abroad.

“We’re going to need to understand as a society how we will confront this issue. We are not going to arrest our way out of this. The numbers involved are huge.”

The 431 children who were safeguarded were in the “care, custody or control” of the suspects and included 127 who were deemed to be at immediate risk of harm. Mr Gormley said he had been “profoundly disappointed” by the scale of the offending. He added: “I think we are all pretty appalled by what this says about human nature.

“The alternative is not to look under the stone but we cannot choose to do this. We have to decide how we intervene in this offending cycle.”

He said the clampdown involved alleged paedophiles who used the so-called “dark web” as well as traditional internet access.

The “dark web” is internet content that is not listed by normal search engines. Users will often use payment methods such as virtual currencies to help avoid detection. Mr Gormley said sex offenders should realise they cannot avoid detection while using the net, even the dark web.

Police gave priority to suspects who had access to children — but fear that thousands more could be viewing indecent images of children online.

In one case a doctor was arrested and charged after more than a million indecent images were discovered on his computer.

Another suspect admitted viewing indecent images of children for 30 years since he was aged 16 and often travelled to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand for sexual purposes.

Others arrested included a foster carer who was looking after an autistic child aged 12 at the time.

One suspect was found to have access to 17 grandchildren, two of whom had already warned that he had abused them. He is in custody.

The NCA provided intelligence packages to all UK police forces. Police refused to give details of how they targeted the individuals.

The operation focused on people accessing indecent images of children online but charges range from that offence to serious sexual assault. Claire Lilley, head of online safety at the NSPCC, said: “This important two-pronged operation has rescued children from abuse and identified many previously unknown sex offenders.

“Direct action like this sends a strong message to those who subject children to sexual assaults that they can and will be traced and prosecuted.

“The operation must be rightly app- lauded but we should view it as yet an- other warning sign that far more needs to be done if we are to stem the sordid trade in these images, often used by those who go on to abuse children.”

Asked how the majority of suspects had evaded detection until now, Mr Gormley said: “It’s a bit like a drugs problem. You need to look for it if you’re going to find it.

“People are unlikely to report this type of crime. You’re not going to have witnesses to it in the way that traditional crime types will.”

Two years ago the NCA estimated that 50,000 people were involved in sharing child abuse images online. In the past 20 years the number of images available has soared from an estimated 10,000 to tens of millions.

The NCA deputy boss said: “As our understanding increases of the scale and the nature of this type of offending enabled by the internet, there is a challenge — for law enforcement and for policy makers.

“Realistically, are we going to be able to arrest our way out of this problem? I doubt it. We need to think about all sorts of measures around prevention, disruption, protection and pursuit.”

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