Greater Manchester Police and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) are working together on a new project to trace and identify abused children whose images are shown on the internet.
E-Spy, as the initiative is known, aims to combine the investigative skills of police officers with the NSPCC’s child protection experience in order to trace and protect online child porn victims, and also to track and convict the paedophiles responsible for the abuse.
The new initiative combines staff from Greater Manchester Police’s Abusive Images Unit with two NSPCC social workers, who are now based full time in the unit.
Assistant Chief Constable Dave Whatton said: "Many of the offenders who use the internet to access and circulate such images, naively believe that they can do so anonymously. But I want to send a clear message to them, that our specially trained officers police the internet, as they would any other beat and so they will be caught and brought to justice".
The NSPCC urges anyone who has concerns about a child to speak out. It runs a free 24-hour Child Protection Helpline on 0808 800 5000.
Web users who find illegal content online can also contact the Internet Watch Foundation, an EU and industry-funded body that works to minimise the availability of illegal internet content. If it finds that the content is illegal it will transfer the details to the police and ISPs.
