Office heroes battling the gangs and abusers

AMID the constant clatter of trains, visitors to an unassuming office block near Vauxhall Station in South London arrive at a sparse reception area before passing rows of staff at computers.

It could be just a call centre, but on the screens the nature of the crimefighting work being done becomes apparent. In one wing, staff compile intelligence on socalled County Lines gangs that use children to distribute cocaine and heroin from cities to provincial towns. In another, workers watch depraved images of sexual abuse to trap predators.

For the latter – part of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command team – the content is so disturbing they must take a break every three hours, and counsellors are on hand 24/7.

With an estimated 88,000 active UK paedophiles, the task of bringing them to justice is vast. In one recent case, NCA experts had to trawl 2.2 million images. Each must be logged in the hunt for the perpetrators and to identify victims. NCA IT experts face a constant battle to keep up with sophisticated encryption software.

There is a reward for the hard work. Last year, 552 victims were identified and 700 children brought to safety due to the NCA’s work. The NCA scored a greater victory last month when it led a multi-national force to smash a group called ‘Welcome To Video’ which hosted 250,000 child-abuse videos on the dark web. It led to the arrests of 337 suspected paedophiles in 38 countries.

Individuals are pursued as aggressively as gangs. Earlier this year, a team at the NCA brought paedophile Tashan Gallagher to justice by matching trainers he wore when abusing children for videos uploaded to a Russian messaging app to those he was wearing on his Instagram account. Gallagher was jailed for 15 years for the rape of a six-month-old girl and assault of a two-year-old boy.

NCA director general Lynne Owens said: ‘Technology has many great benefits, but one of the disbenefits is that we used to be taught that victims and offenders were in close geographical proximity, and they absolutely don’t have to be any more. We have many cases of offenders livestreaming and giving instructions.’