“There are still gaps in our law enforcement and intelligence agencies’ capabilities. This means that those agencies may, for example, still struggle to identify those who have been accessing servers hosting illegal images of child sexual abuse,” May was quoted as saying in a statement published on the UK government website.
May added that sexual abuse against children stands at high levels both online and offline. She also said that the United Kingdom has witnessed “appalling revelations” in recent years.
“Behind every vile image accessed online a real life child has been abused” read the Home Secretary’s speech here:http://t.co/6dridnXWJZ
— The Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) 10 декабря 2014
“There have been cases of organised and persistent child sexual abuse by people who have used positions of trust or their status to carry out abuse, including abuse by celebrities,” the Home Secretary said.
According to May, some 29 members of an organized crime group engaged in child sexual abuse were arrested as a result of an inter-state criminal investigation involving UK, Australian, US and Philippines agencies.
The UK home secretary stated that since 2013, the National Crime Agency has protected over 1,300 children, with 1,300 people across the United Kingdom sentenced for crimes linked to "indecent pictures of children" posted online.
