Fighting child exploitation online
John Holt talks to the man leading the fight against child exploitation online.
Like many a parent before him, Jim Gamble sought the advice of a teenager before his work website went ‘live’.
“I told my daughter that it was really important that we got the language right because we had to be hip,” he says. “She said ‘stop right there; hip is a body part. Don’t ever try to use trendy words again’.”
He learned a very valuable lesson in communication. After all, his online enterprise is not simply geared at ‘getting down with the kids’; it is designed to protect them from paedophiles.
Gamble is Chief Executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre which was established earlier this year to link police forces at home and abroad, business, charities, government and other interested parties in the fight against child abuse and to make the internet a safer place for young people.
The organisation’s latest project is ThinkuKnow, an education programme that will be delivered in schools across the UK by specially-trained police officers, teachers and child protection teams who will encourage children to discuss their internet experiences while offering them vital “safety first” advice.
The online support features a dedicated ‘alarm button’ which enables children to report inappropriate online contact for direct investigation by the CEOP team. (www.thinkuknow.net)
The 1,000 trained personnel aim to spread the message to some one million children by next Spring. They will be armed with state-of-the art interactive multimedia with, among many other child-friendly touches, music supplied free by Oasis.
They are targeting a proportion of the eight million children with online access in the UK; those between the ages of 10-11 and 15-16 are most likely to have a computer in their bedrooms and are, therefore, at the greatest risk of being approached online by a paedophile. According to an LSE study, one in 12 young people arrange a face-to-face meeting with someone they met online.
Gamble, a former head of the Northern Ireland anti-terrorist intelligence unit and previously deputy director of the National Crime Squad, says the best way to tackle internet security for young users is to engage with the children themselves.
“Our message to children and their parents is go online, have fun and stay in control, safe in the knowledge there’s somewhere for you to report any suspicions you may have who can immediately investigate someone who may be grooming,” he says.
Piloting the programme was an eye-opening process for Gamble, who, long before the intervention of his own daughter, experienced at first hand the strong views of children on what they want from a web presence.
“We invited a youth panel to look at our first designs and, quite frankly, they tore them apart. We thought we were being cool and knew what would attract them but the children changed everything; the look and feel, the colours, the use of language. We couldn’t have got it more wrong if we tried.
“But it was refreshing and a very worthwhile exercise. It taught us that anyone - particularly teachers - who wants to use the site needs to know there’s a precise language involved. If you don’t really understand the online environment and can’t talk to children about games, instant messaging and the like, they will recognise you have no credibility and won’t listen to you.
“My advice to teachers or parents is not to sign up for a technical college course to become a technical wizard. Instead, simply sit down with your child or pupil at the computer and ask them to show you around.
No child will take you to their own favourite web spaces but ask them to see the ThinkuKnow site, add it to their favourites and let them know it’s there if there’s something wrong. “The last thing anyone should do is attempt to frighten children away from the internet. I would no more tell a child not to go into a library than I would not to go online.”
The pilot stage also marked the project’s first success, Gamble says. “Around that time, a young girl went online through a well-known service provider, saw our icon and read the advice on our website. Later that night, she was approached online by Lee Costi, a man in his 20s from another part of the country.
“After short conversations, he began to ask her things she was uncomfortable with and asked to meet her. She went back to the website, reported him to us and he’s now serving nine years in prison.
“A police investigation with our support was able to establish he had met two other girls and had had unlawful sex with them. The girl’s actions have prevented him from abusing anyone else in the future.
“Internet paedophiles are very prolific. Many times when we arrest them, we’ll find 50, 60 or 100 chat logs trying to engage different young people. But our message to them is clear. With this programme, they have no way of knowing if the person they are grooming is now alert to the dangers and only a few clicks away from reporting them to us. That should make anyone think again.” See: http://thinkuknow.co.uk/