Experts warn of video child abuse on internet
While photographs of abuse still
account for the majority of material available on the internet, Irish and British child abuse experts believe video clips, which depict moving
images of the abuse with real sound, are a growth area for adults with a sexual interest in children.
“There has definitely been an
increase in the number of video clips available on the internet.
“This is due to increased bandwidth and greater accessibility to digital cameras and camcorders in terms of both price and ease of use,” UCC COPINE project technical support officer Eoin Kelly said.
“Video clips need a lot of computer memory to download and it
is often a question of space and
patience. Video clips might be facilitated by increased bandwidth, but it doesn’t change the fact that these are images of children being abused or how we tackle the problem,” he added.
The COPINE (Combating Paedophile Information Networks in
Europe) project, which aims to identify children from abusive images on the internet and understand the nature of internet offending, hosted a two-day colloquium in UCC on Victimisation with Child Pornography.
It attracted a number of international and Irish experts, including Det Supt Jon Hesketh (all ok) of the British West Midlands Police, who headed up the recent Operation Ore which targeted people downloading abusive images of children. He said there has been a noticeable increase in the number of video clips seized as part of on-going investigations.
“Moving images are a growth area. The fact the child is moving in real time and their voice can be heard intensifies the impact of that image.
“We have also seen an increase in the number of sound files being downloaded.
“This allows the person to hear the screams of the child being raped and in many countries, you cannot be prosecuted for owning a sound file,” Det Supt Hesketh said.
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