Detective Sergeant Lee Kirk, from Nottinghamshire Police's Public Protection Unit which investigated the case, said: "I would like to praise the incredible bravery and courage shown by the survivors in this case in coming forward which then led to the police investigation.
"I hope that this conviction demonstrates our commitment to survivors of these types of offences, and that when incidents are reported our officers will do everything in their power to bring offenders to justice.
"They have had to deal with what happened to them and the massive impact it has had on them throughout their lives. Their ongoing strength and courage is a true credit to each and every one and I’d like to commend them for trusting the police service with their complaints.
"Gadsby’s sentencing will never make up for what happened but I hope it gives the survivors some comfort after being put through such a horrific ordeal. I also hope this sentence gives encouragement to any other survivors of abuse that they can come forward and we will investigate and seek justice for them - even if the abuse happened a long time ago.
"Nottinghamshire Police takes reports of such matters seriously and investigate them, working with the Crown Prosecution Service to put a robust case to the courts. Reporting of such matters should not be deterred by time delays or the community standing of those responsible."
Speaking to Express, Deputy Commissioner Jayalakshmi said that the NCMEC is equipped with technology to monitor sharing of such content.
Vepery All Women Police have booked him under sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and also the Information Technology Act. He was produced before a court and remanded to judicial custody. Police are also inquiring on who the suspect had sent the material to and whether he was part of some large network.
Huge rise in reports of online child abuse imagery
174% increase in one year in Ireland
Six per cent of images depict torture or bestiality
Conor Gallagher, IT
Internet forums were the most common method for sharing child abuse imagery, accounting for 35 per cent of reports. Photograph: iStock
The online sharing of child abuse imagery, known in the legislation as “child pornography”, is skyrocketing, with a 174 per cent increase in reports between 2017 and 2018.
According to the latest report from
Hotline.ie, an online reporting tool funded by the Irish internet industry and overseen by the Department of Justice,
there was a record 12,113 reports of allegedly illegal content in 2018, up from 7,591 in 2017.
Of these,
Hotline analysts classified 1,437 as genuine reports of child abuse content being posted online, a 174 per cent increase from the previous year when there were 524 confirmed reports.
Twenty-three, or 1.6 per cent, of these cases related to abuse images hosted in Ireland. They were all hosted on a single site and have since been removed. In the past this figure has never exceeded four.
The Netherlands was the biggest host of illegal content accessed in Ireland, with 38 per cent of images traced to that country. It was followed by the US which hosted 31 per cent.
Each report of illegal content could represent hundreds or even thousands of images and videos, the report states.
“For the first time in 20 years, Hotline.ie received over 10,000 publicly sourced reports in a year which is a 334 per cent increase from the annual average 2000-2017.”
The figures reflect trends seen elsewhere.
In 2013 there were 116 prosecutions for possession of “child pornography” in Irish courts, a figure which tripled to 392 in 2018.
Extreme abuse
Seventy-seven per cent of the imagery showed children aged between four and 12, while 6 per cent depicted children younger than three.
Six per cent of images depicted the most extreme form of abuse on a five level scale, namely “sadistic sexual torture” and bestiality involving children.
“Level four” abuse made up the bulk of the images (47 per cent). These depicted “penetrative sexual activity between adults and children”.
“Images of children 10 years and younger most often depict them being abused through sexual assault and extreme sexual assaults (bondage, torture and other degrading acts, etc); while images of children over 11 years of age most often depict explicit sexual posing or explicit sexual activity of a child ie masturbation,” the organisation stated.
Internet forums were the most common method for sharing child abuse imagery, accounting for 35 per cent of reports. They were followed by image hosting sites (24 per cent) and cyberlockers (17 per cent).
‘Disguised websites’
Social media such as Facebook or Twitter accounted for 1 per cent of reports. Hotline noted
increasing amounts of imagery (11 per cent in 2018) being hosted on “disguised websites”. These are websites, often depicting legal adult pornography, which display illegal content to users if a specific “digital pathway” is followed.
The growing use of disguised websites is symptomatic of the increasingly sophisticated methods being employed by paedophiles online to avoid detection. Complex encryptions and password-protected image dumps, are becoming more common, experts believe.
All child abuse content was passed to the Paedophile Investigation Unit of the Garda National Protective Services Bureau and to Interpol in the hope of identifying both victims and offenders, Hotline said.
The increasing number of tip-offs and the stricter requirements on internet service providers to report illegal content abuse to the authorities is impacting on attempts by the Garda to clear the current backlog of cases requiring forensic examination of computers.
Last week
The Irish Times reported that online child abuse cases take an average of five years between investigation and sentencing due in large part to pressures on the Garda National Cyber Crime Bureau.
The current maximum wait for the forensic examination of a device for child abuse imagery is two and a half years.
One of the most difficult jobs in the world! Is there no way that it can be automated, at least, in part.
The explosive growth is an indicator that the current system is woefully inadequate and serious upgrades are needed.
Malka Leifer, former Melbourne principal and accused child abuser, granted further delays in extradition process
By Middle East correspondent Eric Tlozek in Jerusalem
The alleged victims of an Israeli teacher accused of sexually abusing girls at a Melbourne school said they were distressed and angry about further delays to her extradition case.
The Jerusalem District Court has granted lawyers for the former principal of the Adass Israel girls school, Malka Leifer, time to cross-examine members of a psychiatric panel that found the 54-year-old had been faking mental illness to avoid extradition.
The panel is meant to be the final assessment of Ms Leifer's mental fitness after more than 30 previous examinations, many of which found her mentally competent to face trial.
And still, they dither and delay. Who is paying these lawyers for their years of preventing justice for the many victims of child sex abuse in Melbourne? Why are the courts being so lenient and patient when there was so much corruption involved in the extradition hearings? It's a sad commentary on the Israeli Justice system.
Birmingham, UK, paedophile pastor convicted of raping children during 20 years of sexual abuse
By Dayna Farrington | Birmingham Express and Star
A "feared" evangelical pastor repeatedly raped children and adults over a 20-year period, telling them that "spiritual bathing" would "cleanse" them of evil spirits.
Michael Oluronbi was convicted of rape and sexual assault against six young girls and the sexual assault of a boy
Self-styled prophet Michael Oluronbi, originally from Nigeria but based in Birmingham, has been found guilty of sexually abusing six girls and a boy.
Five of the victims attended his church and for some of the victims the abuse continued into adulthood.
Oluronbi was convicted on Friday after a nine-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court, and his offending can now be reported after restrictions were lifted.
During the trial, a jury heard that some of
his young female victims became pregnant multiple times but were taken to abortion clinics by qualified pharmacist Oluronbi, to cover up what was happening.
He was convicted of 15 counts of rape, seven counts of indecent assault and two counts of sexual assault.
The 60-year-old's wife
Juliana was convicted of three counts of aiding and abetting rape after helping arrange some of the terminations.
The religious leader was brought to justice after one of his victims, now an adult, came forward.
Juliana Oluronbi was convicted of two counts of aiding and abetting the rape of a child and one count of aiding and abetting the rape of an adult
Jurors heard that Oluronbi was linked to a Christian church in Edgbaston, Birmingham - the Cherubim and Seraphim Church - whose roots were in Nigeria.
He set up on his own splinter group for about 40 adults and children - separate to the church and located at another address - where he began a practice of "spiritual bathing".
The offences took place in Birmingham and London.
Phil Bradley QC, prosecuting, told the jury:
"The Crown's case is that Mr Oluronbi used what he called 'spiritual work' as a subterfuge for that sexual abuse.
"The main tactic he employed was to claim that God had instructed him to administer 'holy baths' to some of his congregation in order to 'cleanse' them and protect them from evil influences. That activity began when his victims were children. There can be no doubt that its real purpose was to serve his sexual gratification."
He added that
for some of the female victims the offending "progressed to repeated rapes, on many occasions leading to unwanted pregnancies and terminations".
"You will learn that this man, who was revered and feared by his victims, kept a vice-like grip on many of them and continued to abuse them well into adulthood," Mr Bradley said.
Oluronbi's victims described him as "controlling" and "almost like a king".
'Spiritual baths'
After the verdicts, Detective Superintendent Nick Walton, of West Midlands Police, said
Oluronbi convinced the children, through conversations with parents, to take the "spiritual baths".
"He convinced a number of children... that these can benefit them either religiously, from a health perspective, or educationally," he said.
"They'd be taken upstairs to the bathroom, stripped naked, sometimes wearing a red girdle - like a sash - and he would wash them down. On occasion he would sexually assault them, but also take them to an adjacent bedroom and subject them to sexual assaults and rape."
The offending happened over a period of 20 years, at various locations, going back to the 1980s.
"Some of his victims described it as a cult," added Mr Walton.
"He has been confronted on occasions by relatives and parents. He never made admissions, and even blamed the Devil for it on some occasions."
He may have been right, but he was the devil!
Attempt to flee
Oluronbi was arrested at Birmingham Airport in May last year, while trying to leave the country for Nigeria with some of his ceremonial belongings and a sum of cash.
Police are unable to say whether he was trying to flee justice, but pointed out
he had recently been confronted about the abuse by one of his victims.
For his victims, the ordeal has taken a "massive" physical and mental toll, detectives said.
Mr Walton added:
"He was a qualified pharmacist so he had access to certain medications, and on other occasions booked them into clinics under false names.
"One of the girls had five or six abortions."
Describing Oluronbi an "intelligent", Mr Walton also said the pastor "laughed" in court on several occasions while giving evidence in his own defence. Mr Walton said Oluronbi had been working as a pastor until his arrest in May 2018.
Police also believe
there could be more victims and have urged anyone with information to get in touch.
Georgina Hewins of the Crown Prosecution Service said:
"This case involved the serious and sustained sexual abuse of vulnerable young children by a religious leader. The young age of the victims greatly increases the seriousness of the offences."
She paid tribute to the
"great courage of the victims" which revealed the "full extent of the despicable and lawless behaviour of these people".
Oluronbi and his wife, both of Orchid Drive in Hockley, will be sentenced at a later date.
More than three million adults across England and Wales were victims of child sexual abuse
One in 13 adults aged 18 to 74 years – 2.4 million women and 709,000 men – were victims of sexual abuse before the age of 16, data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has shown.
This includes rape or assault by penetration (including attempts), other contact sexual abuse, and non-contact sexual abuse.
The abuse was most likely to have been
perpetrated by a friend or acquaintance (37 per cent); while around a third were sexually abused by a stranger.
The ONS has been working to produce a comprehensive picture of child abuse in the UK by incorporating questions into the Crime Survey for England and Wales and analysing this alongside other sources of data.
It found that overall, around
one in five adults - 8.5 million - had experienced a form of child abuse – which includes sexual and physical abuse, as well as neglect and emotional abuse – before they turned 16.
But many cases of abuse remain hidden, with around one in seven adults who phoned one of the national child abuse helplines saying they hadn’t told anyone about the abuse before.
Around half of adults (52 per cent) who experienced abuse before the age of 16 also experienced domestic abuse later in life; compared with 13 per cent of those who did not experience abuse before the age of 16, according to the findings.
Alexa Bradley, of the Centre for Crime and Justice at ONS, said:
“Child abuse is an appalling crime against some of the most vulnerable in society, but it is also something that is little discussed or understood. Today’s release is ONS’s first attempt to fill an important evidence gap on this critical issue.
“Measuring the extent and nature of child abuse is difficult because it is usually hidden from view and comes in many forms. Bringing data together from different sources helps us better understand both the nature of child abuse and the potential demand on support services.”
Figures were compiled using information from government departments like the Home Office, the Department for Education, the NHS, and officials in Wales, as well as the National Crime Agency and organisations like the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).
According to the research there were 19,847 counselling sessions given to children by Childline in the UK where abuse was the primary concern in the year to March 2019.
At the end of March last year, 49,570 children in England and 4,810 children in Wales were looked after by their local authority because of experience or risk of abuse or neglect.
Andrew Fellowes, Public Affairs Manager at the NSPCC, said: “
This report shows how abuse blights thousands of childhoods around the country, and the devastating effects it can have into adulthood.
“But it is also clear from reading this that
we simply do not know how many children are suffering right now, hampering our ability to plan and fund services to help them recover.
“It’s crucial government conducts a prevalence study so we get a true picture of the scale of abuse in the UK. Only then will we know what services are needed to protect and support abused young people.”
Online child abuse rises to 90 recorded incidents a day
in UK
Social media making it easier for paedophiles to use their services
By Jonathan Wilson, E&T
Ninety cyber crimes a day have been recorded against children since the introduction of Government plans to tackle online harms, according to the NSPCC.
The children’s charity predicts that
more than 25,300 child abuse image and sexual grooming offences have occurred since the Online Harms white paper was released in April 2019 - plans which aim to make the UK one of the safest places to be online.
Every 16 minutes
Based on police data from April to June 2019, it estimates an average of
one online abuse offence against a child was recorded every 16 minutes in England and Wales in just over nine months.
The Online Harms white paper proposes a wide range of measures to increase web safety, particularly in regard to protecting young and vulnerable people from illegal content, while making technology and social media companies liable to fines or criminal prosecution if they breach their defined responsibilities.
“By our estimates, an average of 90 potential online abuse crimes against children come to light a day, so it is crystal clear regulation cannot come soon enough,” said Andy Burrows, NSPCC head of child safety online policy.
“The Prime Minister must confirm plans to press ahead with a comprehensive duty of care and urgently introduce an Online Harms Bill that will deliver a well-resourced regulator with the powers to take on big tech.
“Anything less will let tech giants off the hook and have a devastating impact on tens of thousands of children, their families and law enforcement who are left to fight increasingly complex online child abuse day in and day out.”
The news comes as the Online Harms Reduction Regulator Bill is set to be introduced into the House of Lords this week, a private members’ Bill that the charity hopes will speed up the introduction of legislation.
Lord McNally, who will present the Bill said: “Nothing is more important that protecting children from harm. The NSPCC campaign has described not just the extent of the harm but also the solution - a duty of care on technology companies to keep children safe.
“My Bill will help the government move faster in delivering a duty of care to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online. I have made it clear to ministers that I am happy for my bill to make way for urgent Government action.
“But there is not the mood in either House to accept drift and inaction on this important issue.”
A government spokesman added: “We are determined to tackle the evil of child sexual abuse, and the government has committed to legislating to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online.
“We’ve set out world-leading proposals to put a duty of care on online companies, enforced by an independent regulator. We will respond to the Online Harms White Paper consultation shortly.”
In April 2019, the NSPCC contributed to the UK government’s proposals to prevent ‘Online Harms’. After months of consultation and the publication of two parliamentary reports, the government laid out plans for ‘world-first’ laws to regulate internet and social media safety.
The Online Harms White Paper was published jointly by the Home Office and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport and proposed a unified set of rules which could punish social media companies for failing to protect its users against a wide range of online harms.
This followed the news in March 2019 that the Met Police, Britain’s largest police force, declared that it has been “overwhelmed” by a surge in online child sexual abuse and exploitation cases.
Social media platforms are increasingly used to distribute, share and view indecent images on a “global scale”, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) said.
Peter Wanless, CEO of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), called for Facebook and other internet companies to be held responsible for breaches of child safety.
An NSPCC report had already presented evidence that
child grooming cases on Instagram had tripled in the space of 18 months. It had also called for fines on social networks that fail to protect their child users from online predators.
Campaigners for greater child safety online are facing stiff opposition from certain social media companies, despite the latter’s frequent public proclamations about their commitment to the safety of their users. For example, Facebook’s plans to introduce encryption to its Messenger service have been openly called into question by lawmakers in both the UK and the US, who have said that Facebook’s plans could prevent the capture of child abusers and terrorists.
In December 2019, Facebook wrote a letter to Priti Patel, the UK’s Home Secretary, in which it defended its decision to introduce end-to-end encryption (E2EE) to its Facebook Messenger service. Facebook’s statement read: “Every day, billions of people around the world use encrypted messages to stay in touch with their family and friends, run their small businesses, and advocate for important causes.
“In these messages they share private information that they only want the person they message to see. And it is the fact that these messages are encrypted that forms the first line of defence, as it keeps them safe from cyber attacks and protected from falling into the hands of criminals.”
In response to Facebook’s vague and slippery language, a Home Office spokeswoman said: “Facebook has not addressed or mentioned reports from the US National Centre for Missing & Exploited Children that 12 million referrals of child sexual abuse would be lost annually if Facebook implemented end-to-end encryption as planned”.
Dr Martha Kirby, NSPCC policy manager for child safety online, added: “This letter deliberately sidesteps the legitimate concerns child safety experts and governments have about encryption.
“Facebook argues that they prioritise child safety, but they clearly don’t as they seem intent on pursuing their plans which we know could endanger young people.”
