Examination of Witnesses (Question 200)
MR JIM
GAMBLE QPM AND
MR ALEX
NAGLE
18 MARCH 2008
Q200 Mr Evans: You talked earlier
about publicity and sometimes the lack of it because a lot of
people who want to prey on children do it because they think they
have anonymity. Now and again there are high profile cases like
Peter Townshend or Chris Langham where, all of a sudden, you realise
what they have been doing. They are not anonymous and can be tracked
down. Do you think that the media have a responsibility to give
greater publicity to the fact that these people who prey on children
or try to groom them do not have anonymity and in a number of
cases these people end up with custodial sentences?
Mr Gamble: Absolutely. Those who
saw Crimewatch last night would have seen the Son of God
operation which involved a site called Kids the Light of our Lives.
That investigation was co-ordinated and delivered through the
Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre and the Virtual Global
Task Force which is a law enforcement alliance across Canada,
America, Australia and Interpol. Seven hundred paedophiles were
identified around the world and already in the UK 120 have been
prosecuted through the work we are doing. The issue of anonymity
has gone. We may not find you tomorrow but we will knock on your
door one day in future because the one thing for sure about this
environment is that you leave a forensic fingerprint. When I joined
the police nearly 30 years ago the first thing I was taught in
the training school in relation to forensics was that every contact
left a trace. That is never truer than in this environment. Take
child abuse as an example here. Child abuse images are a symptom
of crime; they are a symptom of the fact that if someone has hurt
a child, photographed it and used the image, sometimes as a commodity
and sometimes as a means to engage and influence others, it does
not matter what it is. You can take any real world scenario and
police or govern it in the virtual world. We in the UK can choose
to wait and follow or to lead. I believe that because of our collective
experience across industry, government and policing we have an
opportunity to lead it.
Chairman: Those are all the questions
we have. Thank you very much.
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