ENGLAND — Victims of child sexual abuse in England and Wales will receive assistance in removing online images depicting their abuse through the Echo project. The project supports individuals who have reported abuse to police by identifying and removing online abuse images.
The project launched at the International Policing and Public Protection Research Institute annual conference. It provides trauma support, opportunities to read court victim impact statements, and pathways for criminal or civil compensation to participants. The project is funded by Safe Online and the Graham Dacre Foundation.
The project will access the UK child abuse image database to identify content on the open web and request its removal through the Internet Watch Foundation. Police forces help the project by identifying and referring victims of child sexual abuse. Artificial intelligence is not used in the project.
Simon Bailey, former chief constable of Norfolk, said victims would be identified by matching a unique reference number from their original crime report to images found online. Bailey previously served as the national lead for child protection. "Children were being rescued but once the initial investigation into their child sexual abuse had been concluded, they just became another victim." Bailey said.
Rhiannon-Faye McDonald, director of services at the Marie Collins Foundation, experienced grooming in 2003 when she was 13 years old. A man in his mid-50s posed as a teenage girl online during the abuse.
McDonald described feeling pressured to share images. "I was so terrified. He threatened that everybody would see the photo that I’d already shared, that he would send it to my friends and post it up around my school. I didn’t feel like I had any choice but to send more." McDonald said. She added, "Now kids have got smartphones in their pockets that are more powerful than any computers that we had back then. There’s more opportunities for perpetrators to find, contact, groom and abuse them." Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, "It would make the UK the first country in the world to make it impossible for children to take, share or view nude images."