British paedophiles who livestream child sex abuse in Asia, escape with as little as half the prison sentence of those whose victims live in the UK, a report backed by the former Home Secretary has revealed.
Responding to the report, Mr Javid said: “There is, rightly, a great deal of attention on the exploitation and abuse of vulnerable children living in communities across the UK.
“It's not clear to me why British sexual offenders choosing to abuse by proxy should be treated with any less seriousness.
“They are just as complicit in the harm caused. Morally, it's my view that they may as well have been in the room when their instructions were acted out on an innocent child.”
He added: “For that reason, it's unacceptable that child abusers are handed such lenient sentences.”
“For directing the livestream abuse of a nine-year-old girl and other children, Andrew W. will spend one year seven months behind bars. Longer sentences have been given for possession of Class C drugs such as tranquilisers.”
According to the UK National Crime Agency, the UK is the third largest global consumer of livestreamed abuse, with livestreaming abuse “one of the emerging threats” to children today, as reported in the UK Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA).
The report said that countries such as Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Sweden punish sex offenders who direct livestreamed child sexual abuse on par with contact offending, and urged the UK to do the same.
The IJM also called for UK sentencing guidelines to have limited culpability and aggravating factors that reflect livestreaming child sexual abuse crimes..
One 12-year-old abuse survivor said: “I will not accept two years imprisonment for offenders because they abused and took us away from our families, and this should not be taken lightly. They destroyed our innocence. It's not possible to let go of the things they did to us.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “Child sex abuse is a truly sickening crime and that is why we are increasing prison time for the most serious sex offenders to ensure justice is served.”
As of April 1 2020, the most serious sexual and violent offenders who are given standard determinate sentences of seven years or more have been required to serve two thirds of their sentence in custody, rather than being released halfway, with the final third served supervised on licence and subject to recall to prison. This will mean around 2,000 serious offenders will spend longer in custody.
This issue is as prevalent here in Ireland also. However, detecting crimes such as this, which are forms of sexual abuse and exploitation, are becoming increasingly difficult for an investigator to prove due to encryption being used on Social Media platforms.
Attempts to prevent end to end encryption in Europe is on going. If unsuccessful, online sexual predators will have a serious advantage over investigators, with it ultimately becoming impossible to identify them.
Given the harsh realities of the current online landscape and the prevalence of countless online sexual predators, bearing in mind the difficulties in identifying an offender, parents really need to re-evaluate The age at which children are afforded mobile phones.
Every single child with access to the online world is at immediate risk of harm. Believing otherwise, only exposes the child to unnecessary risk for harm and a lifetime of needless suffering that could have been avoided.