Category Archives: Child protection

Paedophiles create nude AI images of children to extort them, says charity

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Internet Watch Foundation has found a manual on dark web encouraging criminals to use software tools that remove clothing

Paedophiles are being urged to use artificial intelligence to create nude images of children to extort more extreme material from them, according to a child abuse charity.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said a manual found on the dark web contained a section encouraging criminals to use “nudifying” tools to remove clothing from underwear shots sent by a child. The manipulated image could then be used against the child to blackmail them into sending more graphic content, the IWF said.

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Ban smacking children in England and Northern Ireland, say doctors

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Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health urges ministers to follow lead of Scotland and Wales

Parents in England and Northern Ireland should be banned from smacking their children because doing so is unjust, dangerous and harmful, leading doctors have urged ministers.

It was “a scandal” that Scotland and Wales had outlawed smacking but not the other two home nations, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said on Wednesday.

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How Facebook Messenger and Meta Pay are used to buy child sexual abuse material

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Court documents and interviews detail the products’ role in alleged exploitation – and how some payments go undetected

When police in Pennsylvania arrested 29-year-old Jennifer Louise Whelan in November 2022, they charged her with dozens of counts of serious crimes, including sex trafficking and indecent assault of three young children.

One month earlier, police said they had discovered Whelan was using three children as young as six, all in her care, to produce child sex abuse material. She was allegedly selling and sending videos and photos to a customer over Facebook Messenger. She pleaded not guilty.

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Concerns raised over solitary confinement in Queensland youth detention after deaths of two First Nations boys

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Government report says placing children in prison isolation can affect their health and wellbeing in ‘severe, long-term and irreversible ways’

A Queensland government report has raised concerns over the use of solitary confinement in youth detention, detailing the case of two First Nations children with disabilities who died after spending extensive time in isolation at overcrowded and understaffed youth detention centres.

The Child Death Review Board’s annual report, tabled in state parliament on Thursday, details the anonymised cases of two boys, Harry* and Jack*. The report does not explicitly state their cause of death but Guardian Australia understands it to be suicide.

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‘Profiteering off children’: care firms in England accused of squeezing cash from councils

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A local authority leader claims private equity groups are exploiting vulnerable youngsters in care homes in the pursuit of profit

Care companies are insisting on unnecessary and expensive support packages for vulnerable children to boost their profits, a council leader has claimed.

Barry Lewis, the Tory leader of Derbyshire county council, said that former family-run businesses acquired by private equity groups were trying to get “as much cash as possible” out of local authorities.

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Teachers in England could face ban for failing to report evidence of sexual abuse of children

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Home secretary’s mandatory reporting legislation plan already covered by statutory duties, say school leaders

Teachers in England face being banned if they fail to report evidence of children being subjected to sexual abuse under plans for new legislation announced by the home secretary, James Cleverly.

The new law would make it a legal requirement for healthcare professionals, teachers and others who work with children and young people to identify and pass on cases of possible sexual abuse.

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Alfie Steele: more than 60 calls made to police and social services before boy’s murder

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Nine-year-old had been recorded as ‘safe and well’ in months before he was killed, review finds

A nine-year-old boy who was tortured to death by his mother and stepfather had been recorded as “safe and well” after visits by police and social services in the months before he was killed, a review has found.

Family and neighbours of Alfie Steele from Droitwich, Worcestershire, made more than 60 calls about his welfare in the period leading up to his murder in February 2021, including a call saying it sounded as if he was “being hit and held under the water”.

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Teachers in England left to support at-risk children after social services cuts

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Safeguarding staff say they can’t get referrals for serious cases and don’t have the expertise to give pupils the help they need

Increasing numbers of children suffering from domestic abuse, serious neglect and homelessness are being refused help from over-stretched social services, schools across England have told the Observer.

Child protection cases that would automatically have prompted intervention from social workers a few years ago are now routinely being passed back to schools to deal with themselves. The inability to obtain help for children whom schools think are in urgent need is taking such an emotional toll on education staff, who say they have neither the expertise nor the resources to cope, that some schools are bringing in counsellors to prevent their safeguarding teams becoming traumatised.

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Home Office banned from routinely placing lone children in asylum hotels

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High court order says hotels can be used only for very short periods ‘in true emergency situations’

The Home Office has been banned from accommodating lone asylum seeker children in hotels apart from for very short periods “in true emergency situations” after a long-running high court case.

The home secretary’s practice of routinely and systematically accommodating these children in hotels has been ruled unlawful in an order finalised on Thursday. The order states that since December 2021 this practice has “exceeded the proper limits of his powers”.

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Alex Batty’s French hosts say he wanted ‘normal life’

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Owners of gite where formerly missing British boy spent time say he enjoyed sharing in their family life

The owners of a remote French gite where teenager Alex Batty stayed on and off for two years have said he was eager to go to school and “get back to a normal life”.

Ingrid Beauve and Fred Hambye said they treated Alex as part of their family and had no idea of his true identity until last week.

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British boy missing since 2017 Spanish holiday found in France

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Alex Batty was 11 when allegedly abducted by mother and grandfather to give him ‘alternative lifestyle’

A British boy who has not been seen by his legal guardian since he went missing on a family holiday to Spain in 2017 has been found in France.

Alex Batty, from Oldham, was 11 and under the guardianship of his grandmother Susan Caruana when he was allegedly abducted by his mother, Melanie Batty, and grandfather, David Batty.

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Rishi Sunak considers curbing social media use for under-16s

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Reports suggest a ban is among potential options to protect young people from online harm

Rishi Sunak is considering limiting social media access for teenagers under the age of 16 to try to protect them from online harm, with reports suggesting a potential ban is on the cards.

The government is considering further action despite bringing in the Online Safety Act, which requires social media platforms to shield children from harmful content or face fines of up to 10% of a company’s global revenue.

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Police still victim blaming in grooming gang cases, watchdog finds

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Inspection in England and Wales criticises pace of change since child abuse scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale came to light

Police are still blaming child victims of sexual grooming gangs for the attacks they suffer, an official report has found.

The inquiry by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) comes more than a decade after scandals in Rotherham and Rochdale came to light, revealing failings by the authorities that left gangs of men free to attack vulnerable young girls.

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Meta platforms are marketplaces for child predators claims lawsuit

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Facebook and Instagram ‘enabled adults to find, message and groom minors’ for sexual exploitation, alleges state of New Mexico legal filing

Meta has allowed its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, to become marketplaces for child predators, the state of New Mexico alleges in a lawsuit filed against the company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

The lawsuit claims that Meta “proactively served and directed [children] to egregious, sexually explicit images through recommended users and posts – even where the child has expressed no interest in this content”. It claims Meta “enabled adults to find, message and groom minors, soliciting them to sell pictures or participate in pornographic videos”. The company is also accused of fostering unmoderated user groups devoted to facilitating and selling child sexual exploitation content.

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Thousands of new foster carers urgently needed in England, experts say

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Social workers scrambling to find places for children after net loss of 1,000 foster families in past year

Child protection experts have called for an urgent nationwide hunt for thousands of new foster carers after a net loss of 1,000 families in the past year and a record number of children being placed far from home.

Social workers have described scrambling to find friends and family to take children in urgent need of safety, and reported that children are sometimes placed in hotels.

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UK school pupils ‘using AI to create indecent imagery of other children’

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Protection groups call for urgent action to help pupils understand risks of making images that legally constitute child sexual abuse

Children in British schools are using artificial intelligence (AI) to make indecent images of other children, a group of experts on child abuse and technology has warned.

They said that a number of schools were reporting for the first time that pupils were using AI-generating technology to create images of children that legally constituted child sexual abuse material.

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Peter Dutton backs age verification for viewing online pornography

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Opposition leader says graphic videos are ‘playing into the minds’ of young Australians, particularly boys

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has backed calls to implement age verification for viewing pornographic material online.

Dutton says graphic pornographic videos are playing into the minds of young Australians.

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Leicester woman given life term for 2012 murder of one-year-old baby

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Katie Tidmarsh found guilty of killing ‘defenceless young child’ she had been in the process of adopting

A woman has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 17 years for murdering the one-year-old baby she was in the process of adopting, after failing to disclose mental health problems to the adoption panel.

Katie Tidmarsh, 39, was convicted of murdering Ruby Thompson, who sustained catastrophic brain damage and died in hospital in August 2012.

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One in 10 biggest English councils risk bankruptcy over child protection bill

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County Councils Network says local bodies facing insolvency after increase in children being taken into care and ‘out of control’ costs

“Out of control” increases in child protection spending since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic have put one in 10 of England’s biggest councils at risk of effective bankruptcy in the next few months, a survey has revealed.

Many county councils and unitary authorities are “running out of road” to avoid insolvency as they grapple with high inflation, increases in children being taken into care, and massive bills for children’s homes, the County Councils Network (CCN) said.

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Biggest private children’s homes in England made £300m profit last year

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Fee income for 20 largest operators – many private equity-owned – soars as councils struggle to meet costs

The biggest private providers of children’s homes in England made profits of more than £300m last year, as concern mounts over the conditions some children are being placed in and the spiralling costs for councils.

Fee income for the 20 largest operators of independent children’s homes totalled £1.63bn last year, a 6.5% increase on the previous year. And 19% of that – £310m – was recorded as profit, according to an independent analysis. Half of the top 20 providers have some private equity or sovereign wealth fund ownership.

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