A challenge to America
The Internet Watch Foundation – which I chaired for six years – continues to do great work and today publishes its latest annual report with some sobering messages. New figures show the severity of online child abuse content is increasing, with a four-fold rise in images depicting the most severe abuse, such as penetrative and sadistic sexual activity.
This trend reflects an apparent growing demand for purchasing more severe images with nearly 60 per cent of commercial child abuse websites selling child rape images. 29 per cent of all potentially illegal child abuse URLs known to the IWF contain level four and five images.
28 per cent of commercial child abuse domains were hosted in Russia which is perhaps not too surprising given the law enforcement problems of that country. Very disturbing, however, is the continued dominance of the USA in the hosting of this terrible material. 62 per cent of commercial child abuse domains are hosted in US. It is time that Americans acted to change this.