Only a fraction of child sex abuse images reported are investigated by gardaí

Gardaí are investigating just a fraction of thousands of reports by tech and social media companies each year about online material linked to child sex abuse being viewed, downloaded, shared, or produced in Ireland.

Gardaí are investigating just a fraction of thousands of reports by tech and social media companies each year about online material linked to child sex abuse being viewed, downloaded, shared, and/or produced in Ireland.

Last year, 160 investigations were undertaken by gardaí, despite more than 9,000 reports of potentially abusive material being flagged by external agencies and through a Department of Justice hotline.

It has led a Facebook employee to raise concerns that gardaí are not adequately staffed or equipped to deal with the rising number of reports.

The most recent figures show there are 44 Garda members attached to the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau and 71 attached to the Garda National Protective Services Bureau, who provide guidance and assistance across the range of sexual crime, online child exploitation, and child protection issues.

US centre

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), based in the US, collates and checks reports from tech giants such as Facebook, Google, and Instagram and sends reports of suspicious material to the relevant policing authorities.

In 2019 and 2020, it flagged 13,612 suspected cases of online child abuse to gardaí — 6,959 in 2020 and 6,653 in 2019. Separately, a hotline operated by the Department of Justice received a further 2,852 reports in 2020 and 2,575 in 2019.

Gardaí investigated 296 reports in 2019 and 160 last year. While some reports of images may be duplicates of material that gardaí are already aware of, or may not meet the criteria for child sex abuse, there are concerns that gardaí are ill-equipped to deal with the volume of reports.

A senior Facebook investigations employee who spoke to the Irish Examiner on condition of anonymity said they have serious concerns about Garda resources.

“At Facebook, we assess child sexual abuse material against US legislation, which is very similar to Irish legislation in terms of the criteria,” they said. 

“We send the report to National Centre for Exploited and Missing Children, who then triage the image to check whether they have seen it before.

“My experience is that the material sent to the NCMEC is accurate. There are errors, of course, but not over 96%. If we were that bad at it, we’d know about it.

The 44 staff at the cybercrime bureau are not just focused on child sex abuse material. They’re focused on scams, hacks like at the HSE. If you take that number and divide it by the number of crimes, that’s how overstretched they are.

“I just don’t get the feeling the guards are equipped to deal with the amount of this we’re seeing.”

A Garda spokesperson said: “All reports received are assessed but may not lead to a formal investigation for a number of reasons, including but not limited to, the content reported cannot definitively be categorised as child pornography as per the definition of same within the relevant Irish legislation or that URLs are hosted outside of Ireland and therefore cannot be actioned from an investigation perspective by An Garda Síochána.”

The law defines child sexual abuse imagery as any visual depiction of sexually explicit conduct involving a minor or imagery whose dominant characteristic is the depiction, for a sexual purpose, of the genitals of a child.

The EU Commission said it plans to legislate to require technology companies to do more to tackle child sexual abuse. Last month, home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson said internet providers and social media firms had reported 22m child sexual abuse offences in 2020, up from 17m in 2019.

She said five companies were responsible for 99% of the reports. Meta, formerly known as Facebook, was responsible for 95% alone.

The commissioner warned that the sharing of material depicting child sexual abuse had surged during the pandemic by up to 25% in some EU countries.