UK: 1,000 arrested in paedophile swoop

This graphic shows the fight against paedophiles is global -
with agencies in the U.S. and Britain working together

More than 1,000 alleged paedophiles have been arrested in Britain in the past 12 months thanks to new high-tech cyber tracking methods, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The wave of arrests is unprecedented – more than five times the 2012-13 figure of 192 – and shows how remote access to abusers’ use of the internet by silent automated search ‘bots’ appears to be turning the war against internet paedophilia.

Over the same period, more than 1,300 children at risk of abuse have been ‘rescued’ through the same methods, and given police protection or placed in care – another huge increase on the 569 total from the previous year.

This newspaper was last week given exclusive access to CEOP, the body formerly known as the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, which since October last year has come under the command of the National Crime Agency (NCA). The figures above relate its own operations and do not include arrests made by local police forces.

CEOP’s director Johnny Gwynne said the key to success is the use of clues in abusive images harvested from the internet to mount investigations into the perpetrators of real-world ‘contact abuse’ of children.  (more...)

UK: 1,000 arrested in paedophile swoop