CEOP welcomes the launch of the NSPCC’s Helpline to combat child trafficking in the UK

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre welcomes the launch of the NSPCC’s advice line to help protect children trafficked to the UK against sexual exploitation, forced labour, drugs transport, benefit fraud, and other crimes.

The NSPCC Child Trafficking Advice and Information Line (CTAIL) on 0800 107 7057 will help provide relevant professionals, such as social workers, teachers, immigration officers, the police, and others working or volunteering with children, to help identify and safeguard child victims. It will also shed light on the scale of child trafficking in the UK.

CEOP staff will working alongside NSPCC and will be able to provide relevant advice and information to callers from a child-focussed law enforcement perspective, and provide a link to the UK’s Human Trafficking Centre (UKHTC) for operational and tactical advice

Common signs that a child may have been trafficked include:

• Children who seem confused about their living arrangements, or how they came to be in the UK.
• Adults who appear to be controlling a child’s ability to communicate with others or take part in normal life.
• A child being looked after by adults whose relationship to them is unclear.
• A young person who regularly goes missing from local authority care and turns up at different locations around the country.
• A child who is known to regularly beg for money or is linked to criminal activity.
• A child who has not been enrolled at a school, registered with a GP and whose contact with social services is being hampered by their supposed carer.

46 Arrests in UK as international child sex offender network smashed

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre has coordinated the UK response in smashing a global child sex offender network.

So far, 46 suspects have been arrested in the UK in operations involving 22 police forces around the country with more arrests expected in the near future.

Operation Koala was initiated in 2006 and involved the sexual abuse of children from a modelling website based in Italy. ‘Customers’ from all over the world were able to order tailor-made videos depicting the abuse.

The investigation began when a child abuse video - made in Belgium - was discovered in Australia. A Belgian perpetrator and two victims were identified. Consequently, the sole producer of the material, a 42 year old Italian national, was arrested. He was running a website on which he sold over 150 self-made, sexually explicit videos of young girls. The business had been running for eighteen months and generated considerable profits from around 2,500 customers worldwide.

The abusive material was mainly produced in the man’s private studio. Some material was filmed in Belgium and the Netherlands. One of the video’s sold by the Italian suspect shows a father sexually abusing his daughters of 9 and 11 years of age. ‘Customers’ of this website were able to order tailor made videos and some even travelled to the studio in order to watch and record the abuse, making their own private videos.

Shortly after the Italian child sex offender was arrested in Bologna, the Italian authorities forwarded all digitalised material, including ‘customer’ details to Europol and Eurojust. From here, the material was disseminated to the countries in which customers were identified.

In June 2007, the material was passed to CEOP which holds UK responsibility for receiving intelligence and information from overseas on child sexual abuse crimes.

CEOP’s Intelligence Faculty analysed and developed the material and passed details of individual suspects to their local police forces who in turn initiated their own investigations. Operational activity in relation to these investigations is ongoing and likely to continue for some time.

Chief Executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre Jim Gamble said:

Yet again we see the technology used by paedophiles to facilitate child abuse now turned against them as a result of coordinated and effective international law enforcement cooperation. Operation Koala uncovered the true meaning of ‘online child abuse’: in this case, the exchanging of images in which real children were subjected to horrific sexual abuse, often to order.

The work by Eurojust and Europol on this complex and dynamic investigation will, through working with partners internationally, make children safer in many different countries.

The UK police forces involved in Operation Koala include: Bedfordshire; Cambridgeshire; Cheshire; Derbyshire; Devon and Cornwall; Durham; Essex; Gloucestershire; Grampian; Greater Manchester Police; Kent; Metropolitan Police; Norfolk; Northumbria; North Yorkshire; Northamptonshire; Police Service of Northern Ireland; Scottish Crime Drug Enforcement Agency; Surrey; Sussex; Strathclyde; Thames Valley Police.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre works in both online and offline environments to protect children from sexual exploitation. Full information on all areas of work, as well as online safety messages and access to online reporting, can be found at www.ceop.gov.uk.