Published: Wed 7 Feb 2018
Susie Hargreaves OBE, IWF CEO, said: “Jon Venables’ guilty plea to three charges of making indecent images of children and one of possessing a paedophile manual, following previous convictions for viewing child sexual abuse images, brings to light how easily offenders can access this content and why it is so important that these illegal images and videos are removed as quickly as possible.
"The work of the IWF has managed to reduce the proportion of these images hosted in the UK from 18 percent in 1996 to less than one percent today but this case only serves to highlight how important the fight against online child sexual abuse images is and how much more there remains to be done. It's vital to remember that every one of these images is of a real child and every time someone views that image the child is revictimised again and again.”
While providing legal certainty is desirable, the IWF says voluntary detection alone is not enough to meet the scale of the child sexual abuse crisis online.