More than 500 child abuse images offences recorded in region

West Mercia Police said is dealt with 517 child abuse image offences in 2017/18 - down slightly from 530 the previous year.

Nationally, child abuse image offences are recorded every 23 minutes by police in UK, with offences up almost a quarter since last year to 22,724 recorded crimes.

The new figures were obtained by the NSPCC via Freedom of Information requests.

The charity is warning that offenders are using social networks to target children for abuse online, grooming and manipulating them into sending naked images. Without adequate support the impact of this abuse can last a lifetime.

A single offence recorded by police can involve hundreds of indecent images of children.

The NSPCC’s #WildWestWeb campaign is calling on Government to prevent abuse from happening in the first place by introducing an independent regulator to hold social networks to account and tackle grooming to cut off the supply of these images at source.

Last month an NSPCC survey of 40,000 young people revealed an average of one in 50 schoolchildren had sent a nude or semi-nude image to an adult.

Blackmailing

In February, Matthew Falder was jailed for 32 years at Birmingham Crown Court after blackmailing young people into sending him humiliating pictures of themselves which he shared on abuse forums.

And in April, Gavin Small of Shawbury, was handed a suspended sentence after more than 32,000 indecent images of children were found on his computer.

Tony Stower, NSPCC’s head of child safety online, said: “Every one of these images represents a real child who has been groomed and abused to supply the demand of this appalling trade.

“The lack of adequate protections on social networks has given offenders all too easy access to children to target and abuse. This is the last chance saloon for social networks on whose platforms this abuse is often taking place.

“Our Wild West Web campaign is calling on Government to introduce a tough independent regulator to hold social networks to account and tackle grooming to cut off supply of these images at source.”

While UK authorities work to remove child abuse images from the internet new images are constantly uploaded. In 2017, the Internet Watch Foundation identified over 78,000 URLs containing child sexual abuse images3.

The NSPCC’s #WildWestWeb campaign is calling on Government to create an independent regulator to hold social networks to account. Join the NSPCC’s campaign and sign the petition online.