Police chief Simon Bailey, also in charge on Operation Hydrant co-ordinating cases of allegations of child sexual abuse Pic credit :BBC
CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM
Simon Bailey, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for child protection, has caused a storm of controversy this week by suggesting that people who view pornographic pictures of children on the net should not be prosecuted.
He wants to limit prosecutions to people who direct child sexual abuse on line and those seeking to groom young people on line so they can later rape them. As he says:
“There are tens of thousands of men seeking to exploit children on line with a view to meeting them with a view to then raping them and performing the most awful sexual abuse on them. That’s where we believe the focus has got to be, because they’re the individuals that pose the really significant threat.”
He wants people who just view child sexual abuse to be given a caution and put on the sex offenders register because he says the police haven’t the resources to prosecute them.
He told the Times : “We’re able to asses whether a paedophile viewing indecent images of children is posing a threat of contact abuse and in circumstances where that individual does not pose a threat of contact abuse they should still be arrested, but we can then look at different disposal orders than going through the formal criminal justice system.”
He described this group as the ” tip of the iceberg”.
Now what is shocking about this is the scale of the problem. We are now having the police say although they are prosecuting 400 people a month they cannot cope with the numbers who are committing this crime because it is so widespread. What does this say about the nation we now live in?
Yvette Cooper Pic credit : Twitter
Yvette Cooper, chair of the home affairs select committee, has responded very robustly to this in a letter she released to Simon Bailey.
” This raises some very serious concerns about the scale of online child abuse, about the level of resourcing the police have available for it, about the systems the police has in place to deal with this new and increasing crime and also about the priority being given to it by police forces.”
“You also referred to there being a significant number of “very low-risk” paedophile offenders and you stated that the police have become very adept at assessing the risk to children in terms of which offenders will move on from viewing indecent images to committing contact abuse offences.
“This was certainly not the case a few years ago when the police indicated that making such assessments was very difficult. I would therefore be grateful if you could set out the evidence to support your statement, including the changes which have taken place in the last few years to bring about the improvements in risk assessment to which you refer.”
Finally she warns that will people who are not prosecuted still go on the Disclosure and Barring Service.
“Specifically, could you explain, under the current disclosure and barring rules, if a case was dealt with outside the criminal justice system, what information would then be available to organisations carrying out checks on people applying for voluntary or paid positions with children. ”
He has until March 7 to reply. I hope he will be summoned to explain himself before Parliament.
His assessment seems to suggest we are turning into a nation of paedophile voyeurs because the offence is so widespread. This would suggest we are becoming a very sick nation indeed.
Westminster Confidential 
The police don’t have a great track record at dealing with the subtleties so i agree with Yvonne Cooper that more reassurance would be needed to trust his suggestion. However I agree with him that the emphasis of police resources needs to be on those more predatory people online.
Many professionals have said for a long time there was much more sexual abuse going on than was acknowledged by the police or politicians and if the resources are not made available their cloth has to be cut somewhere.
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Let us start by getting the right cloth in the first place!
Let us start by making it a legal requirement to report & work on All Criminal cases equally!
Let us start with arresting those bankers & fraudsters who have cost this nation & are still costing this nation billions every year or is not important enough either!
Let us start with the police doing what they are paid to do! & let us tart at the top level of policing who tell the lower ranks what they can & can’t do or who they can & can’t arrest!
Let us start with a police force who actually care about the abuse of children, How radical is that?
Let us start with uncovering all the cases of historic child abuse that have ( & its futile to argue that its is nit the case.! Been consistently at a high up level for decade upon decade!
I know this time I’ve really got it! Let us start doing things for the right bloody reasons for a change!
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Well said!
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Well written , the point this excuse of a copper missed, every child
Viewed or downloaded by paedophiles are ABUSED either in real time
or recorded. Every man or woman found viewing or downloading start
with ten year mandatory jail sentance, but asmoney is the nectar of a
Tory, I won’t hold my breath.
Justice must be done and seen to be done.
Regards J
Sent from my iPad
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Reblogged this on Buried News and commented:
The internet has brought many benefits to mankind over they years, but few seen the dark side of it at its inception. Before its inception pornography was for most the top shelve of a newsagent, out of the way of young people, I remember a shop sex creating a stir in the town I used to live and was closed down. We have moved from our Victorian hypocrisy regarding sex, but that does not open the door to a Free for All. What the Chief Constable is forgetting is if we take no action against the voyeurs, we are on the slippery slope of de-criminalisation.
The Chief Constable I would presume is a man of the world or is he another fine product of the Intelligentsia, surely he has not said this to create a debate, were no debate is necessary.
Who does he think is in these images, a porn star from one of the many porn film companies that have emerged over the last twenty years. Of course not, it could be a 7-13 old performing sex, whose parents, guardians have sold them into a form of sexual slavery, or even worse a child who has vanished from their home never to be seen again and whose short life be extinguished in a snuff film. Or a child placed in front of a Cam and made to carry out sexual acts as the tokens pile up for the person in control of the child.
If there was no voyeurs out there, there be no corruption of the child. Childhood is the age of Innocence and this officers comments will in lead to the end of innocence for a child. They will also grow up seeing sex as a form of exploitation and in many ways not only will their childhood be stolen, but so will their adult life. So for the Police Officer to say we should spend police time on other issues, is he talking about handing out car fines, more Cautions to damage people’s prospects of employment, dealing with minor neighbour disputes, etc None of these are important as much as ending child pornography as it is well documented that watching excessive porn can lead to violence and rape.
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