Police warn of online child abuse ‘tsunami’
THE shocking scale of child grooming in Greater Manchester has been revealed – as police warn of a ‘tsunami’ of online abuse.
A no-holds-barred report shows there has been staggering rise in reports of child grooming. It reveals:
The number of suspected paedophiles in the region has doubled in three years
Reports of child grooming have quadrupled
Local heroes from bus drivers to gardeners have helped to catch paedophiles
A huge rise in runaways since our sister paper the MEN exposed the crisis in 2011
Five-month-long delays in investigating online child abuse
The findings are by Stockport MP and campaigner Ann Coffey who was ‘shocked’ by the figures, but said greater public awareness and frontline training was helping to shine a light on the scandal.
Ms Coffey first issued a report on child sexual exploitation in Greater Manchester two-and-ahalf years ago in the wake of the Rochdale grooming case, concluding far more work was needed to track paedophiles and listen to youngsters.
Her follow-up, published this week, concludes huge strides have been made – helping to prompt a surge in reports of suspected child grooming and other sexual abuse.
It reveals the number of grooming-related crimes have shot up from 146 to 714 since 2013, a fourfold rise.
By last October the number of suspected child sex offenders had more than doubled to more than 1,100.
And the number of child sexual offences overall – including those where youngsters have not been ‘groomed’ but have been abused – had risen 50 per cent.
Shockingly, in more than one-in-five of those cases the victim was aged 12 or under.
Ms Coffey also found police battling against a tide of online child grooming, leaving officers running to keep up.
But as of December there was still a fivemonth backlog in investigating computers and phones thought to contain evidence of online abuse.
In the most shocking case, one mother told how she handed in her 13-year-old daughter’s devices to officers in 2013, but after 10 months nothing had been done and the perpetrator was able to groom another victim.
However Det Chief Supt Paul Rumney, at the time head of Greater Manchester Police’s public protection division, insisted they were managing to intercept many other online paedophiles, telling researchers: “We want to make Greater Manchester an extremely hostile place for online perpetrators.
“It’s a tsunami that we can get ahead of.”
Ms Coffey says there has been a huge rise in the number of tip-offs received by the police about grooming and greater public awareness.
“As the extent of the level of sexual offences, including child sexual exploitation, is revealed one still cannot fail to be shocked at the levels of sexual abuse of children in our communities.
“It is no longer hidden,” she said.
“Greater Manchester Police and agencies involved in the protection of children have undergone cultural changes in their approach to tackling child sexual exploitation over the past two to three years.
“This indicates a growing awareness of CSE amongst the police, statutory agencies, the community and young people themselves who appear to have increased confidence to come forward to report abuse.”