Believe in Me

 Incredible things happen when you believe in children

Like Barnardo's, we believe a child’s future should never be defined by their past. We want to help transform the lives of more vulnerable children in the UK. However difficult the beginning of their story, incredible things happen when you believe in them. That’s why Barnardo's have launched the Believe in Me campaign. Please show you believe in children by supporting us as we support Barnardo's.

Horrific: 523 potential child sex abuse victims

More than 500 children have been identified as potential victims of online sexual abuse during a major investigation by Police Scotland.

The force said 30 million indecent images were uncovered and 77 people had been charged during Operation Latisse.

The charges include rape, sharing indecent images of children and grooming for sexual purposes.

Of the 523 potential victims, some as young as three, 122 have been referred to child protection services.

The operation, which involved 134 separate investigations, was carried out between the 6 June and 15 July.

Police said child victims had been found after the homes of 83 suspects were searched and 547 computers and other devices seized during the five-week operation.

Almost 400 charges have been brought so far, including rape, sharing indecent images of children, grooming for sexual purposes, sexual extortion, indecent communication with children, possession of a firearm, bestiality and drugs offences.

In one instance, a computer that featured 10 million images depicting child abuse was found. Police Scotland said it would take four full-time officers six months just to view the number of images uncovered.

Assistant Chief Constable Malcolm Graham, who led the investigation, said: "This is not sexting in terms of people sending abusive messages to each other.

"This is children being sexually abused and these images being shared.

"It is about real victims in Scotland and elsewhere. It's about these horrific acts which ruin people's lives and we need to make sure that stops."

The investigation involved officers analysing in excess of 100,000 online chat logs.

Examination of one device led officers to conclude that one adult suspect had been sexually communicating with more than 110 children and young people.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-36922820

Luka: Help prevent abuse to children

Barnardo's vision is that no child should be affected by sexual exploitation, but more children than ever before need them. In 2014–15, they worked directly with 3,200 exploited or at-risk children in the UK. But the true number of victims is likely to be much higher. The pain of their ordeal and fear that they will not be believed means they are too often scared to come forward, and they might not recognise themselves as a victim.

Support White Hat Rally - together with Barnardo's we can make a difference.

Thanks to DM-K for creating this great video - a DofE project at age 13

What is the dark net?

In network terms, the dark net is a virtual network layered over the Internet through which computers can communicate anonymously and securely. This has some benefits around whistle blowing and freedom of speech, but inevitably there's a dark side too. From terrorism, weapons and drugs trading, assassinations and, sadly, child pornography. With it's origins from around 2004, with the first public open source  release of TOR (The Onion Router), the rapid rise of the dark net has changed our world irrevocably.

Interestingly, and unrelated to the dark net, operation Dark Net was the codename used for a distributed denial of service attack that was launched by Anonymous to bring down websites hosting child pornography. Ironically, many of these sites identified and targeted were contained within a dark internet segment. Such segments are so named as they seemingly become detached from the Internet and are non-responsive to normal traffic, as if the address space were a black hole.

So the darkness where vampires, ghost, goblins and all things that go bump in the night lurk ties in nicely to dark net, dark web, dark internet and Dark Net. In our Amsterdammed adventure, the dark net is the perfect place to start exploring Europe in search of clues. This year's event, The Rise of the Dark Net, culminates in Amsterdam amongst the dark canals and creaky bridges.

Hunting paedophiles on the dark net

The Home Office minister responsible for combating online child abuse has announced an initiative to search the dark net for paedophiles. Using GCHQ's resources, normally focused on spies and terrorists, and drawing on expertise from specialists in industry, including Google and Microsoft, they hope to bring down paedophile networks operating within the dark net.

Unicef claims there are hundreds of thousands of websites with child pornography worldwide and it is likely that child pornography consumers are even more active on hidden networks, such as TOR (Onion).

Read more on the Telegraph Blog and at The Sunday Times

Child porn hidden in legitimate websites

The Internet Watch Foundation has warned that websites are being hacked to host images of child sex abuse. In the last six weeks it has received over 200 reports from users of adult porn sites saying they have been redirected to child porn that is being hidden on legitimate websites.

"Typically, someone visiting a normal adult porn website is redirected to, say, a file directory listing in a furniture shop's online home, which has been compromised and filled with images of terrible abuse."

Read more on this story at The Register.

Former Ireland rugby player guilty of child abuse

Former Ireland international rugby player David Tweed was found guilty on 13 child sex abuse charges in November 2012.

Tweed, 53 who played rugby for both Ireland and Ulster, faced abuse charges relating to two girls over an eight year period.

Crown Court Judge Alistair Devlin told Tweed his crimes were "vile, wicked, dastardly and distasteful" and would be treated very seriously.

He also paid tribute to Tweed's two victims and said his crimes had inevitably placed a "dark shadow" upon their lives.

Tweed has been jailed for eight years for child sex abuse.

Help us stop child abuse

By supporting White Hat Rally you could help prevent child abuse like this...

Man jailed for rape after online grooming

14 November 2012

A man who raped a 12-year-old girl, after posing online as a teenage girl, has been jailed for over 14 years.

Gary Cooper, 47, pleaded guilty at Winchester Crown Court to sexual grooming and rape after he fabricated a profile in a social network site in which he purported to be a 15-year-old girl called Chantelle.

Passing sentence, the judge called Cooper "highly manipulative". The court heard how Cooper had used the online site to meet his victim in July 2011 and then took her to Hertfordshire where he raped her.

After being reported missing, the girl was found by Hertfordshire Police the following morning. A police investigation uncovered a series of offences against the 12-year-old and another girl to which Cooper pleaded guilty.

Det Insp Dave Storey, of Hampshire Constabulary, said:

"This incident highlights the ease with which online paedophiles can use social networking sites to communicate with children and parents should be mindful of who their children are communicating with and any arrangements that are made following contact."

BBC © 2012

Support us to transform the life of a child

By supporting White Hat Rally you will transform the life of a child like Emma.

Unloved, lonely and isolated, Emma was targeted by an abuser. Emma thinks she was seven or eight the first time it happened.

"I don’t like to remember, it hurts. But I do know that after that I started behaving badly at school, I didn’t want to go and I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I ended up running away when I was 14. I was sleeping rough and staying on friends’ sofas. Everyone had let me down and I didn’t want to get hurt anymore. I met an older man who I believed loved me and all I wanted was to be loved by someone."

The man Emma met and believed to be her ‘boyfriend’ was in his early 30s. He showered her with attention, gifts, alcohol and drugs. 

"I really thought he loved me, I would have done anything for him."

Emma managed to run away and was found by the police, but she was too distressed to give her story. However, the police put the young girl in touch with a Barnardo’s worker, who managed to gain her trust and slowly Emma began to reveal her true story.

Child sexual exploitation is a major child protection issue across the UK. Hidden from view and going unnoticed, vulnerable young girls and boys are groomed via the Internet and are then abused, leaving them traumatised and scarred for life.

Abuse victims increasingly being groomed online

An increasing number of child sex abuse victims are now groomed through social networking websites or by mobile phone, according to a report by leading charity Barnardo’s.

The use of technology in targeting children “markedly increased” in just one year said Barnardo’s. It is perhaps not surprising that exploitation takes place “over the internet, through mobile phones, online gaming and instant messaging”, given the central role of technology in young people’s lives.

Warning that in many cases young people are encouraged to take explicit photographs of themselves, Barnardo’s said that parents, schools and children themselves need to be aware of the risks. It wants schools to be told not to delete explicit images they find on pupils’ phones, in case they could be used as evidence in court cases.

Over a year ago, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre claimed paedophiles are using Twitter to discuss abuse and post links to child pornography images. Facebook came under pressure to install a 'panic button' so young users could alert police if they find a paedophile posing as a teenager.

Barnardo’s is concerned that public service budget cuts are in danger of affecting services to protect victims.

The number of children we work with rose, yet we are still not seeing the urgency of action we would expect for such an horrific crime.

Too many children from all walks of life can so quickly be caught up in a world of drugs, violence and sex – this is a sickening slur on our society and we must do all we can to end it.

Anne Marie Carrie, Barnardo’s chief executive

Most grooming takes place either in private or in places such as cafes and parks, with 9 out of 10 victims being girls, of which almost half have run away from home.

Increasing numbers of victims are exploited by people their own age, or even younger, who either abuse them themselves or bring them to abusers. The Barnardo’s report also highlighted the extent of exploitation by organised gangs, which often move children around the country and sometimes use businesses as a cover.

“Almost all services reported it as an increasing priority, and some have identified that the majority of their service users were initially groomed via social networking sites and mobile technology.”