UK is online child abuse capital of Europe as cases treble

BRITAIN has become the online child abuse capital of Europe after the number of cases reported to police trebled in a year.

Official data show UK police were handed a record 316,900 online child abuse reports to investigate last year, a 225 per cent increase from the previous record of 97,727 in the year before.

It was the largest number of child abuse reports in Europe, ahead of Turkey with 276,331, Poland with 235,310, France with 227,465, Germany with 138,193 and Hungary with 109,434. Most of the reports related to the Metaowned social media firms Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp. The companies refer any child abuse they uncover to a central reporting agency, the Usbased National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, which passes the reports to law enforcement agencies in the relevant country.

Experts linked the large increase to the better detection and reporting of abuse by tech firms – in particular Google, which reported 2.2million cases of child abuse, up by 148 per cent.

However, they said it also reflected a genuine rise in online child abuse, accelerated by the pandemic, when millions of children spent longer online.

It is also believed that the disproportionate number of reports in the UK could be linked to the higher numbers of children with smartphones and internet access. Nine in 10 British children own a mobile phone by the time they reach 11, according to Ofcom.

Andy Burrows, the former head of child safety online policy at the NSPCC, who analysed the data, said the “particularly worrying” rise in reports underlined the need for the Government to introduce its online safety legislation as soon as possible. He said: “These results really underline the child protection imperative of passing robust legislative and regulatory frameworks in both the UK and EU, reversing a status quo in which the social and economic costs of online child sex abuse continue to grow.

“In the UK alone, the Government estimates the economic cost of online child sex abuse to be at least £2billion a year – a product externality for companies, but a devastating toll for families left to deal with the consequences of preventable abuse.”

According to data from the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, some of the bigger tech firms are failing to detect or report online child abuse, with Twitter making only 98,050 reports and Apple just 234.

Two senior Tory MPS have written to Chloe Smith, the Science Secretary, urging her to close a loophole in the Online Safety Bill that means social media bosses will escape prosecution if child sexual abuse and illegal content promoting suicide is persistently allowed to remain on their platforms.

Currently, instead of jail, the regulator Ofcom will only be able to issue fines of up to 10 per cent of global turnover.