Mainstream pornography sites are ‘changing what is normal’, warns child abuse expert Michael Sheath
Michael Sheath has been counselling people with what he describes as “deviant sexual interests” for a long time.
“I have been working with men who abuse children for 33 years. For the first 15 years I worked with child molesters and I still do that, but now I also work with downloaders of child abuse imagery and online groomers.”
Continue reading...Home Office accused of making ‘no arrangements’ for transfers of unaccompanied minors after EU rules expire at end of year
Unaccompanied children in France are being told by the French authorities that they should give up hope of being reunited with family in the UK after the Home Office failed to offer the help it had promised.
With the deadline to enter the UK legally and safely under the EU’s family reunification rules due to expire at the end of the year, the Home Office is accused of reneging on its vow to help unaccompanied children reunite with family in the UK.
Continue reading...Companies respond as investigation finds videos of rape and revenge pornography
Mastercard and Visa said on Thursday they would block their customers from using the credit cards to make purchases on Pornhub following accusations the pornographic website showed videos of child abuse and rape.
They reacted following an investigation by the opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times that also alleged the site depicts revenge pornography and video taken without the consent of participants. Pornhub has denied the allegations.
Continue reading...Site – visited 100m times a day – to make changes following allegations it was hosting abusive and non-consensual material
Pornhub, one of the largest adult content sites in the world, has announced it will be banning unverified video uploads after allegations that it has been hosting child abuse videos.
An investigation by the New York Times last week claimed Pornhub was hosting non-consensual and child abuse content on its website. Activists have long called for changes to Pornhub’s business model, claiming it was not carrying out sufficient checks to ensure videos were consensual.
Continue reading...The Internet Watch Foundation is seeing a growing number of tipoffs about child abuse. We talk to one analyst about her work
Isobel* has been working throughout lockdown. With her colleagues in the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) analyst room in Cambridge she has been responding to a rising number of tipoffs from the public that child abuse images are circulating online. The work is gruelling.
“Today I started at 8.30 and I’ll be looking at content all day long: thousands and thousands of images in a day. We analysts come from all sorts of backgrounds. The main thing is your emotional resilience – it’s incredibly important that you can look at this content and then go home and not think about it.”
Continue reading...The use of webcams and live streaming has led to increased grooming by predators during the coronavirus pandemic
Child abuse experts are warning that an growing trend of children being groomed through webcams and live streaming by predators has led to a sharp rise in the number of abusive images circulating online since the beginning of the pandemic.
Much of this abuse is happening in children’s own homes while their parents or caregivers are in another room, according to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which says it had already dealt with an increased number of reports of online child abuse images this year. September was a record month with 15,000 reports from the public, 5,000 more than the same month in 2019.
Continue reading...Warning comes as man admits using Messenger to coerce children into sending explicit pictures
Police and a children’s charity have warned that a man who admitted 96 counts of child sexual abuse could have escaped justice if technology giants had already toughened their encryption.
David Wilson targeted young boys aged from four to 14, getting them to send compromising pictures and video. Some were so traumatised that they considered ending their lives.
Continue reading...Damning report says church put its reputation above the welfare of abuse victims
The Catholic church “betrayed” its moral purpose by prioritising its reputation over the welfare of children who had been sexually abused by priests, a damning inquiry report has concluded.
In its final review of the church, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA) was scathing in its criticism of the leadership of Cardinal Vincent Nichols and says the Vatican’s failure to cooperate with the investigation “passes understanding”.
Continue reading...Growing up in Africa taught me to be self-reliant and resilient. Putting children to work must be seen in local context
Aged eight, Tayambile would walk with her mother every day to fetch water. On her 2km return journey in 30C heat, she would carry 20 litres in an aluminium bucket on her head.
She would then help to pound maize in a mortar and prepare food for the family – typically fresh fish caught by her father on the lake.
Continue reading...Two-year BBC News Arabic investigation uncovers horrific conditions, with boys as young as five facing violence and sexual abuse
An April evening in the suburbs of Khartoum. After months of undercover work, I had learned to time my visits to khalwas, Sudan’s Islamic schools, to coincide with evening prayers. I entered while the sheikhs (teachers) and 50-odd boys dressed in their white djellabas were busy praying. As they knelt, I heard the clanking of chains on the boys’ shackled legs. I sat down behind them and started filming, secretly.
I began investigating after allegations emerged of abuse inside some of these schools: children kept in chains, beaten and sexually abused. Khalwas have existed in Sudan for centuries. There are more than 30,000 of them across the country where children are taught to memorise the Qur’an. They are run by sheikhs who usually provide food, drink and shelter, free of charge. As a result, poor families often send their children to khalwas instead of public schools.
Continue reading...A new bill could close loophole allowing under-18s to marry in England and Wales, as charities warn Covid has exacerbated hidden child marriage
When Payzee Mahmod was married at 16 to a man nearly twice her age she didn’t understand the words spoken during the Islamic ceremony – and nobody thought to translate them for her.
The teenager, who loved fashion and pop music, was preparing to start college. “I had just finished school and the idea of not wearing a uniform was exciting to me,” she remembers. “Instead I found myself trussed up in a wedding dress, with elaborate jewellery, feeling like a sale item at an auction.”
Continue reading...Benjamin Thomas pleaded guilty to 40 offences over 30 years, mainly against teenage boys
A former pastor and BBC television presenter has been jailed for 10 years and four months after he admitted abusing boys and men over almost three decades.
Ben Thomas, 44, carried out many of his attacks while his victims were sleeping at Christian camps and conferences, Mold crown court in north Wales heard.
Continue reading...Agency to review historical photographs after issue raised on website and social media
Magnum Photos, one of the world’s most celebrated photographic agencies, is to re-examine the content of its archive of more than 1 million images after accusations it made available photographs that critics said may show the sexual exploitation of minors.
In a statement, the president of Magnum, Olivia Arthur, said the agency, whose founders included Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, had begun an “in-depth internal review to make sure that we fully understand the implications of the work in the archive, both in terms of imagery and context.
Continue reading...Police say material, including photos of acts with newborns, shared on a well-known instant messaging platform
Italian police say they have broken up a child abuse ring used to share illicit material, including photos of newborns, via an instant messaging platform.
Police said on Saturday that the crackdown involved dozens of search warrants and led to the arrest of three people for allegedly possessing what was described in a statement as “huge quantities of pornographic material depicting minors”. About 50 people are under investigation.
Continue reading...Data shows 55% of offences where the means of communication was given involved firm’s apps
More than half of online grooming offences recorded under a law that made it illegal to send sexual messages to children were committed on Facebook-owned apps, figures reveal.
The data, obtained by the NSPCC under freedom of information laws, show 10,019 offences of sexual communication with a child were recorded since the legislation was introduced in April 2017.
Continue reading...Polish archbishop calls for Vatican to ‘launch proceedings’ after release of child abuse documentary Hide and Seek
A Polish documentary on child abuse by Catholic clerics has put a damper on centenary celebrations of the late Pope John Paul II’s birth.
After the film Hide and Seek was seen by almost 80,000 people on YouTube, Polish archbishop Wojciech Polak called on the Vatican to “launch proceedings” into the cases in question.
Continue reading...Watoto church investigated over decision not to pull out as 48 children are among those stuck abroad due to border closures
The Ugandan government has launched an investigation into the activities of a megachurch in Kampala after seven members of its internationally renowned children’s choir were diagnosed with Covid-19 following an overseas tour.
The country’s child affairs minister, Florence Nakiwala Kiyingi, told the Guardian the Internal Security Organisation was investigating Watoto church for allegedly breaching child labour laws, taking the children out of the country without permission and putting them at risk by not cancelling the tour as coronavirus cases escalated and countries closed their borders.
Continue reading...Study says volunteers reported a rapid reduction in desire without impaired self-control
The risk of some men sexually abusing children could be quickly reduced by a drug that lowers testosterone levels, researchers have found.
The team behind the project, which was put up for crowdfunding four years ago, said the drug – degarelix acetate – produced the results in men with paedophilic disorder in just two weeks. The drug was developed as a treatment for prostate cancer treatment and blocks the production of testosterone.
Continue reading...Boys’ lives were blighted after sadistic beatings by John Smyth more than 40 years ago, successor group admits
A Christian organisation whose forerunner ran holiday camps that led to boys being beaten sadistically has reached a settlement with three men and acknowledged that “lives have been blighted”.
The Titus Trust has expressed “profound regret” for the abuse carried out by John Smyth QC and has apologised for “additional distress” caused by the way the trust responded to the allegations.
Continue reading...IICSA report calls for social media firms to be made to act, as police struggle to keep up
Social media companies should be forced to pre-screen all uploaded material to help law enforcement agencies cope with the “explosion” in online child sexual abuse in the UK, a critical report says.
The UK is identified as the third-biggest consumer in the world of the livestreaming of abuse in the 114-page study by the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse (IICSA).
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