Police raise child porn alarm

3 August 2004

AMSTERDAM — Dutch police chiefs have called for a national co-ordination point to be set up to combat the sexual abuse of children, raising alarm over an enormous increase of international child pornography on the internet.

The Council of Chief-Superintendents will examine in the autumn how such a co-ordination and reporting point can be funded. A spokesman said the necessity of a national co-ordination point was self-evident and that only the funding needed to be arranged.

Spokesman Den Bakker also said the council intends to work in closely with the existing, private child pornography reporting point, Meldpunt Kinderporno. The present reporting point was established eight years ago and can be found at www.meldpunt.org.

“We think that they are doing good work, but the responsibility really must rest with the government. The approach must not only be left to private individuals,” Bakker said.

Police chiefs believe the national co-ordination point should employ 15 police officers who would manage a child pornography database, assess reports of child pornography and actively conduct investigations on the internet, news agency ANP reported.

Dutch police currently have several departments focused at combating child pornography, both regionally and within the national police force KLPD. But Bakker said these departments were no longer sufficient due to the rising amount of child pornography.

The Meldpunt Kinderporno said a sharp rise was detected last year in the number of reports it lodged with police over pictures depicting the sexual abuse of children compared with 2002. The 4,000 reports represented a 67 percent increase.

The trend has continued in the past few months, with research indicating that in the four-month period April to May 2004, the number of child pornography reports had quadrupled compared with the same period in 2003, ANP reported.

Furthermore, complaints of child pornography spam emails have quadrupled in the first half of this year. The meldpunt also claimed on its website that child sex crimes are becoming more extreme and called for greater research to be conducted into this phenomenon.

But it said taking action against the websites advertised in emails was not always possible because they were often hosted in countries where the tracking down of pornography criminals does not form a priority.

Subject: Dutch news