OVER the four decades I’ve spent campaigning to end child sexual abuse, a number of the victims I met told me videos and images of their rape and torture ended up online.
I have also spoken to men who committed the crime of accessing child abuse imagery, which police refer to as “a crime scene”. This is, plain and simple, child sexual abuse.
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Having initially accessed pornography involving adult women, these men became increasingly daring — eventually taking a risk by paying for the most extreme content.
This risk, however, is minimal: Most men (the majority of child sexual abusers are men) who commit these crimes will never be caught.
Even if they are, and it gets to court, they are likely to be let off with a suspended sentence.
Yet if former BBC newsreader Huw Edwards, as a high-profile figure, had been made an example of and sent to prison, the deluge of press coverage would have been bound to act as a deterrent to thousands of men.
This is why I back The Sun’s campaign for tougher sentences, Keep Our Kids Safe.
The scale of the problem is shocking.
According to a study released last year by Childlight, a global child safety institute at Edinburgh University, one in ten men has carried out sex offences against children, either online or offline.
The leniency with which child abusers are treated is at least partly responsible because it reinforces the sense that, because a computer screen sits between viewer and victim, the crime and the harm are somehow less “real”, and thus, less wicked.
This is categorically untrue.
There is no getting around the fact that, for child abuse images to exist, child abuse must have taken place.
Every single instance I have ever come across involving a man abducting and raping a child began with him accessing child abuse images.
I believe men who abuse children within their own family often go on to access these vile images to further feed their sadistic urges.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood will shortly be presiding over a sentencing review that will consider strengthening the punishment for offences against children — including making jail time mandatory for criminals like Edwards, convicted of viewing and/or sharing Category A images of child sexual abuse.
According to the National Crime Agency, eight in ten of those convicted over such images currently avoid jail.
Horrific crimes
I agree that anyone in possession of Category A material should be jailed. The levels of abuse involved in producing these images is horrific.
There should be zero tolerance — yet as things stand, men are able to use and share this material with little fear of the consequences.
And the crime doesn’t stop with looking. Those who set out on this pathway often end up committing even more serious, horrific crimes.
The link between freely available mainstream pornography and illegal child abuse imagery is also undeniable.
Increasingly, child abuse imagery normalises the idea of sexual intercourse with a “teen”. Mainstream sites offer legal videos with titles such as Daddy I Don’t Want To Go To School or Teen Used And Abused.
The Lucy Faithfull Foundation, a UK child protection charity, has found legal material — accessed mainly by men surfing sites like Pornhub — can serve as a gateway to illegal content showing real children being abused by adults.
In the UK, the viewing and downloading of child porn is increasing all the time.
Julie Bindel
With the porn industry acting as the main source of sex education for boys, and encouraging men to develop fantasies relating to sex with children, what chance is there of curbing the tidal wave of child sexual abuse?
According to the National Police Chiefs’ Council, 35 per cent of the households raided for viewing child sexual abuse images had children of their own.
In 2021/22, there were on average 848 arrests each month for downloading indecent images of children. That figure has more than doubled in the past decade.
In the UK, the viewing and downloading of child porn is increasing all the time.
According to the Internet Watch Foundation, the number of child sexual abuse images increased by more than 20 per cent between 2021 and 2022.
Our prisons are overcrowded and our justice system is on its knees.
Living a life sentence
But in a world where, despite the best efforts of dedicated detectives, such images continue to proliferate (creating more victims) and be accessed, surely this crime warrants the harshest punishment?
In the wake of Edwards’ sentencing, Childlight has revealed that an estimated 1.8million men in the UK engage in this hideous crime.
The institute also estimated 300million children globally are victims of online sexual abuse and exploitation each year.
What will it take for the courts to take this seriously?
Whenever a defence barrister or judge suggests sending these men to prison will permanently destroy their reputation, we need to ask: What about the lives of the victims? They are living a life sentence.
If we are to make room in our prisons for anyone, it is the men who abuse our children. Otherwise, many more children will be forced to endure this abuse.