Yahoo News Thousands of paedophiles escaping justice, warns former police chief
An astonishing 30,000 paedophiles are going unpunished even though police possess the technology to identify and arrest them, the former head of the police’s online child abuse unit has told The Telegraph.
In a withering critique, the ex-police chief in charge of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), Peter Davies, said vulnerable children were being subjected to sexual abuse that could be prevented.
Peter Davies, who retired as an assistant chief constable last month allowing him to speak out for the first time, said he was disgusted by and dismayed at the refusal of authorities to tackle the problem.
“I feel like a lone voice in the wilderness,” he said. “There are tens of thousands of people who should be locked up but we don’t know what to do with them.”
Research by CEOP when Mr Davies headed the national unit suggested 50,000 paedophiles in the UK were downloading illegal child sex images and videos.
The unit believes a little over half of those also engage in physical abuse.
Mr Davies said that police possess the technology to identify about 30,000 of the estimated 50,000 offenders, but under current policy the crimes are largely ignored due to a lack of resources.
Mr Davies, who retired as an assistant chief constable last month, said: “I am an old-school police officer and in my opinion we should be going after these offenders and prosecuting them.
“To deal properly with this offending population we need to invest on a scale that would be radical and different. The alternative is we leave these thousands of people to carry on causing terrible harm and I don’t think that is acceptable.”
The lack of resources to investigate current offenders will give fuel to critics of costly high-profile historical abuse inquiries, such as the disastrous £2 million Operation Midland. The investigation into a VIP paedophile ring was launched on the basis of allegations of a single complainant who turned out to be a fantasist.
Wiltshire Police has already spent £1 million investigating the former prime minister Edward Heath, who died in 2005, amid claims it has found no evidence of wrongdoing, while the delayed Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse is expected to cost more than £100 million but has been beset by scandal and delay.
Mr Davies said: “Of the many ‘historic’ investigations, a few have been poorly conducted and a waste of valuable time and legitimacy. A great deal of effort and resource is being directed at areas which, while important, do not feel to me as significant as the real, present, detectable threats to children now.”
The Research by CEOP when Mr Davies headed the national police unit suggested 50,000 paedophiles in the UK were downloading illegal child sex images and videos.
Of those, it thought a little over half are also ‘contact’ abusers, that is adults who are also physically sexually abusing children.
Mr Davies told The Telegraph that police possessed the technology to identify about 30,000 of the estimated 50,000 online offenders. Each of those should be investigated - but under current policy, the crimes are largely being ignored due to a lack of resources. The criminal justice system would simply be overwhelmed and unable to cope.
But Mr Davies said: “I am an old school police officer and in my opinion we should be going after these offenders and prosecuting them.
“What this means is to deal properly with this offending population we need to invest on a scale that would be radical and different. The alternative is we leave these thousands of people to carry on causing terrible harm and I don’t think that is acceptable.”
Mr Davies’s comments follow a damning report last week into CEOP by the Independent Police Complaints Commission over its failure to investigate after Toronto police handed it a list of 2,000 people who had downloaded indecent films of children from a Canadian company.
The list of names was passed to CEOP by Toronto police in July 2012 but the contents ignored until October 2013.
Mr Davies was never told of the existence of the list, which contained the names of at least two serial child abusers, including Myles Bradbury, a doctor at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, who admitted 25 offences, including the sexual assault of young cancer patients.
Mark Frost, 70, a former teacher scout leader, who last year admitted 45 offences including rape and sexual assault of boys, was also on the Operation Spade list flagged up to CEOP in 2012.
A third offender Martin Goldberg, a deputy headteacher, had taken hundreds of indecent images of children. He killed himself after police finally began an investigation.
Mr Davies, who was head of CEOP for three years until 2013, had attempted to shake up the organisation.
But he found himself accused of bullying by junior members of his team. He was given ‘management advice’.
Operation Midland: How it unfolded
Mr Davies, who now works for an international security consultancy Austability, said: “I don’t think people really understand what a serious offence the possession of indecent images of children is.
“Each image is the scene of a crime. A child has been sexually abused to create each image and any customer downloading that image is complicit in the abuse.”
Police currently have the technology to catch online offenders. But if encryption systems improve, those efforts will be thwarted in the future.
Mr Davies said there was currently a ‘golden opportunity’ to crack down on thousands of paedophiles but that chance would be missed if encryption techniques improve.
“If this golden window of opportunity is slammed shut in a few years’ time, it might stay shut forever after,” said Mr Davies. “It would not be hard for police to find offenders by the thousands. I can’t tell you the secrets of how that is done.”
But he said resources needed to be made available and urged the Government to rethink its priorities. “We are spending for example billions of pounds on the high speed rail network. But what about the human infrastructure of this generation of children who are being sexually abused?
"And what about the insider threat posed by so many criminals committing such offences unchallenged? It is time we had a public debate about this.”
