Massive online child abuse problem, says head of NSPCC Wales

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-33612026

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Urgent action is needed to stop child abuse appearing online as the scale of the problem is massive, the head of the NSPCC in Wales has said.

Des Mannion made the call two years after Prime Minister David Cameron pledged a crackdown on such abuse.

The NSPCC has produced a UK snapshot of offenders taken to court since then.

In Wales, they include a former deputy head teacher from Wrexham, a children's entertainer from Colwyn Bay, Conwy, and a school caretaker from Cardiff.

"The scale of the problem is shocking and even more so because of the number of people who hold positions of trust in our communities," Mr Mannion said.

"This is just a fragment of the hundreds of other similar convictions during the same time.

'Horrendous abuse'

"It is a myth that there is no harm in just looking at these images. Defenceless babies and children are being molested to feed the appetite of offenders and that demand is just not going away.

"The prime minister made a bold attempt to tackle this problem, but it is clear that, two years after he called for a crackdown, the scale of the problem is proving to be massive.

"We need urgent action to prevent this horrendous abuse from appearing online."

During a keynote speech in July 2013, Mr Cameron promised law enforcement agencies would be given more powers and challenged search engines to stamp out the vile images that were hidden "in the darkest corners of the internet".

But a recent report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary showed that over half of investigations into online child abuse are inadequate.

In the NSPCC's snapshot, more than 4.5m images were seized by police in 100 criminal cases taken to court across the UK.