4th Nov 2014

Resourcing prosecutions for online sex offenders

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (“CEOP”) estimate that some 50,000 people share, download or otherwise distribute images of child abuse.  The report does not state the level of abuse depicted in the images nor whether the individuals involved download such images on a regular basis or sporadically. Notwithstanding the absence of hard data one can guess the number of the images of child abuse circulating around the UK to be substantial.

The sheer number of illegal images has placed a very real strain upon the prosecuting agencies and in particular the police service.  It has to both source the illegality by trawling through the Internet and dark net to find instances of illegal downloading and then to collate sufficient evidence to prosecute the offenders.  Prosecution invariably involves a forensic examination of the offender’s digital equipment that may include several PCs, laptops, digital cameras, remote hard drives and other digital storage equipment.  Although there is sophisticated software that recognises known abuse depictions and can recognise trigger search terms, most of the forensic analysis still involves a visual examination of images to identify those that are illegal.  The images must then be categorised into one of five categories used in the COPINE Scale (Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe).  This is the scale used in the UK to categorise the severity of images of child sex abuse.  Small wonder that currently the time taken to conduct a forensic examination is in excess of six months.

As the exercise is so labour intensive, recently Keith Bristow the head of the National Crime Agency admitted that it would not be realistic to expect that all 50,000 offenders would be brought to justice.  Instead pragmatically he suggested the police should focus on those offenders who posed most risk.  Politicians have reacted angrily with the Labour Party calling the statement a disgrace and the Conservative government saying that resources will be made available. Nonetheless if even only half the known individuals are investigated, arrested, interviewed and a forensic examination of their digital equipment undertaken, then police forces will be swamped.

Perhaps the time has come to re-evaluate the way in which we deal with online child sex abuse. There is clearly a graduation of offence from the very serious category five depiction involving images of children involved in sadomasochism or bestiality, to the less serious category one depiction involving images of children in erotic poses.  A 2012 CEOP report discovered compelling evidence that those individuals who possessed child abuse images are likely to be a risk to children.  If the CEOP report is correct in principle, then by extrapolation one may infer that those who view category five depictions are more likely to have already engaged in child abuse and the nature of the abuse will be far more heinous than the individual who views category one images. If so, it is not only morally correct but essential that the police target their resources to the more serious offenders.

This leaves open the question of what to do with the less serious offenders.

Child abuse is one of the few crimes for which there is little or no rehabilitation and, perhaps more importantly little or no opportunity for an offender to try and wean himself off viewing child imagery without the risk of prosecution.  The catch-22 for most offenders is that they risk criminal investigation, prosecution and perhaps jail if they wish to admit their predilection. Compare and contrast the drug addict who is given every opportunity to wean himself off his addiction both before and after the criminality that he engages in to feed his addiction.

Perhaps, there should be some for them amnesty for those individuals who wish to atone. Clearly the amnesty would have to be limited and perhaps only apply to individuals who:-

• Volunteer to admit they have viewed online illegal child image images;
• Have only viewed child images between, say, categories one and three;
• Are prepared to assist the prosecuting authorities with names, addresses and details of other paedophiles;
• Sincerely wish to stop their viewing of illegal images by submitting to counselling and /or other rehabilitative courses;
• Are prepared to co-operate with the police generally;
• Are prepared to submit to some form of monitoring perhaps akin to the licence conditions that paedophiles are subject to following release from prison;
• For whom there is no evidence of actual child abuse.

If the effect of the general amnesty for those offenders who fit the category is to reduce the level of child abuse, then clearly the scheme will be beneficial. It will also free up resources to target recidivist abusers.

One of the other cohorts involved in viewing child abuse images, ironically, are children themselves.  It is suspected that large numbers of teenage boys perhaps from the age of 12 or so upwards have access to the Internet and use it to view pictures of teenage girls online.  Teenage boys are naturally more inclined to look at indecent pictures of girls of a contemporary age than pictures of women over the age of 18 years. Although the perpetrators are children themselves they have nonetheless committed an offence if the girls in the pictures are under 18 years old.  It is accepted these children are rarely prosecuted but they do - inadvertently - contribute to the profiteering of illegal child imagery on the internet.  So one of the other ways to approach the downloading of child images is to identify teenage boys who engage in this practice, perhaps oblivious to the illegality of their actions and educate them away from this sort of behaviour.  The benefits are obvious. Firstly the market for viewing illegal images of teenage girls will drop. Secondly, those teenage boys who initially start viewing the images as a dare or out of curiosity will not become the 20 something’s who are hooked on pornography.  Adult pornography, although legal, poses a social dilemma and any exercise that reduces the number of adults viewing pornography is probably good.

It is a fact that police resources are finite and currently not sufficient to investigate and prosecute all those who view illegal child images.  Thus it is clearly appropriate to target resources to the serious offenders.  An amnesty would offer lesser offenders the opportunity to assist the prosecuting agencies with information, whilst at the same time undergoing rehabilitation without the fear of prosecution that currently drives them underground. Secondly teenage boys who probably constitute a sizeable number of the offenders need to understand the illegality of what they do and why it is socially reprehensible.

If one took the low-level offenders and teenagers out of the equation, then the number of true hard-core offenders may well be a manageable group for the police and prosecuting agencies.

Robsonshaw is a specialist firm of solicitors dedicated to sexual abuse compensation claims.  We are here to help you make a claim on a no win no fee basis.  For free, no obligation advice, please contact us anytime on 01392 345333 or email us on enquiries@robsonshaw.uk