A report shows the UK is leading the fight against explicit images of children
Cara McGoogan 
A dramatic rise in child sex abuse images online has raised concerns about the ability of authorities to stop illegal material from spreading across the internet as criminals create new ways to hide.
The number of websites found to be hosting explicit and abusive images of children increased 20 per cent in 2016 to 2,416, according to the Internet Watch Foundation's annual report of potentially illegal sites.
The independent body, which monitors for sites that sell and show indecent photographs and videos of children under the age of 18, said the problem is growing with new internet addresses offering criminals more places to hide material.
The IWF found that new web domains, such as .london, are increasingly being used for the distribution of indecent and sexual material containing children. It said there was a 258 per cent increase in the number of times it had to take action against such sites last year.
As the number of sites has increased, the balance of where they're located has shifted from the US to Europe, the Foundation said. The majority of sites, 60 per cent, were in Europe compared with 37 per cent in the US.
UK showing the way
But the watchdog's findings show the UK is leading the fight against child abuse online, with a minute proportion of all content hosted there.
"Only 0.1pc of the content was hosted in the UK," said Sarah Smith, technical researcher at the IWF. "That's because of the great partnerships we have with law enforcement and industry here.
Speed is of the essence here because those images
are of children being sexually abused
Sarah Smith, Internet Watch Foundation
"The content is taken down incredibly quickly once we've spoken to our police partners at the National Crime Agency. Speed is of the essence here because those images are of children being sexually abused."
As the size of the problem has increased the methods used by criminals to hide the material has become more sophisticated. The report shows the number of illegal websites disguised as legitimate ones has more than doubled since 2015.
"They use this technique called 'disguised websites' to hide content and make it more difficult to take it down," said Smith. "This lets them get access to things like payment processing services, which is something we're concerned about."
Responding to the news, a spokesman for the NSPCC said: "We must never forget that there is a victim behind every child sexual abuse image, and every time these horrific pictures are viewed a child is re-abused. Anyone who wilfully seeks out this material is complicit in fuelling this appalling industry."
"To stamp out this crime altogether we must tackle the escalating demand for child abuse material by finding out what deters offenders and potential offenders from viewing child sexual abuse images."
Germany offers and advertises psychological help for pedophiles. That's a good place to start. But we may need to find ways to shame these people and reveal the embarrassment their families endure when they are outed.
We need to convince people, even family members to confront other family members who may be viewing child porn and tell them to stop now, get help if they need it, or they will be turned in to police.
We need to get the message out that this is extremely destructive and evil; that it destroys vulnerable children who have no voice. We also need for MSM to reveal the extraordinary amount of child sex abuse that occurs and make it the single most important issue of our time, because it most certainly is. Most MSM outlets have only ever investigated the fringe of the issue or specific events. They need to develop the big picture before the world can see just what an astonishingly horrific atrocity this is.
Cudos to the UK for what they have accomplished with child porn sites. The rest of the industrialized world needs to follow suit.
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