INTERPOL's work to fight crimes against children

People who sexually abuse children come from all countries, cultures and levels of society. They can blend into the general population, working and living alongside colleagues and neighbors who never suspect their criminal activities. The general conception is that all child sex offenders are predatory, covertly targeting, abducting and sexually abusing their victims. This type of offender is the exception rather than the rule. However, they are the most dangerous and attract the widest media attention because such abductions can and often do lead to the murder of a child.

There are an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 child victims of sexual abuse whose images are available on the Internet. Perpetrators of this type of crime tend to be either deviants with a sexual interest in children or organized crime groups drawn to the huge profits involved in providing such images commercially. In both cases, it is not uncommon for them to cross borders to commit their crimes in other countries.

It is essential for police to be able to co-operate with their counterparts globally to fight computer-facilitated crimes against children. The Internet’s borderless nature significantly complicates the identification of victims at the national level. Images can be easily taken and uploaded in one country, and then made available to anyone in the world with a computer and an Internet connection.

The existence of a central body to collect, store, analyse and disseminate information on child exploitation on the Internet is the most effective way to combat these offences. INTERPOL’s unique position in the international law enforcement community, the expertise of its specialised officers and the police forces in its 186 member countries enables it to fulfil this important role, while helping countries avoid duplication of investigative effort and conserve resources.

The main component of INTERPOL’s work involves co-ordinating international investigations, analysing information and intelligence, and managing the INTERPOL Child Abuse Image Database (ICAID).

INTERPOL’s Specialist Group on Crimes against Children focuses on four areas: commercial exploitation and trafficking in children; sex offenders; serious violent crimes against children; and child sexual abuse images. More and more countries are engaging the Trafficking in Human Beings Sub-Directorate at the INTERPOL General Secretariat in their efforts to combat crimes against children, as the amount of data being recovered from computers all over the world during investigations continues to grow.

Child sexual exploitation on the Internet ranges from posed photos to visual recordings of brutal sexual crimes. The victim’s suffering continues far beyond the actual abuse through the circulation and use of the images via the Internet.

The INTERPOL Child Abuse Image Database (ICAID) is one of the main tools for helping police fight child sexual exploitation on the Internet. The ICAID facilitates the sharing of images to assist law enforcement agencies with the identification of victims. The ICAID, which had more than 125,000 images when it was created in 2001, currently contains more than 520,000 images submitted by 36 member countries. This database has helped police identify and rescue almost 600 victims from 31 different countries to date. The ICAID also enables INTERPOL to assist ongoing investigations by providing a mechanism for alerting authorities when new images of sexual abuse are found.

The examples below provide some insight into how INTERPOL assists police around the world to investigate and solve this type of crime.

Example 1

Two young girls, aged 9 and 11, were being sexually abused and filmed. A video of the abuse was found in Australia, where authorities requested the assistance of the INTERPOL General Secretariat to identify the language spoken and hence possibly the location of the victims. The involvement of various authorities, together with INTERPOL’s co-ordination of the investigation, led to the identification of the location, rescue of the victims, arrest of the abuser, the girls’ father, in Belgium, and arrest in Italy of the man who filmed the abuse.

Example 2

Two men were arrested in early 2005 for their involvement in the sexual abuse of children as young as 18 months. Close co-operation between the INTERPOL General Secretariat and the police and National Central Bureaus in Spain and Canada uncovered a network of child rapists operating throughout Spain.

The case started in February 2005, when a Canadian police officer discovered images of child abuse and liaised with INTERPOL for further analysis. A Spanish officer working at the INTERPOL General Secretariat was able to confirm the location of the crime as Spain based on the computer keyboard visible in the video. Analysis of the images yielded other clues, resulting in the arrest of the abusers and the identification of seven victims aged two to four years old. The main abuser worked as a babysitter, providing him easy access to children.

Example 3

In October 2003, INTERPOL’s Trafficking in Human Beings unit received 50 images of child abuse from the Swedish police. The pictures were called the ‘Green Leaves’ series. The INTERPOL General Secretariat received an additional 20 videos by Canadian authorities featuring the same victim in August 2005. With assistance from officers at the General Secretariat, the language spoken in the videos was identified as Polish.

During spring 2006, a Polish police officer participating in a training programme with the Trafficking in Human Beings Sub-Directorate at the General Secretariat further analysed the film. A section of a children’s playground area could be seen outside the room where the footage was shot, and the officer identified the area as being in a specific neighborhood of Warsaw. With this information, police were able to pinpoint the location where it had been filmed. In August 2006, the abuser was arrested and his victim rescued after many years of abuse.

Without the assistance of vigilant officers in member countries and at the INTERPOL General Secretariat, these and many other similar cases would probably not have been resolved or would have required additional time and resources. These cases also demonstrate the effectiveness of an international point of contact which can provide crucial analytical, linguistic and operational support for complex criminal investigations.