Police turn to charities for help with teenagers caught up in online child abuse

Police forces are turning to specialist charities and partner agencies to cope with the growing number of teenagers caught up in online child abuse. Frontline officers warn that young people are going down a pathway through extreme content that can lead to real-life abusive images of children.

From Friday 6 November, it is illegal to publish or possess pornography showing strangulation, incest, including some step-relations, or adults acting out fantasies of sex with under-16s. The ban builds on years of campaigning linking pornography to real-life harm. Adverts from the Ministry of Justice have circulated on social media warning extreme pornography users to delete the material before the deadline or face prison sentences of up to five years.

DC Sarah Turner, part of a specialist team investigating child abuse in West Mercia, said the law would be difficult to enforce. "Teen is one of the most popular porn terms; there is a huge appetite for this material, it leads to blurred lines," she said.

Police and legal experts say that while the new laws are urgently needed, the government must emphasise they are aimed at large platforms rather than what individuals have on their phones. DCI Gerard Smith, who leads the West Mercia team, told the Guardian: "There has to be a focus on the distributors in order to prevent the sharing of this material at source." His officers knock on doors in the early hours to arrest people viewing or sharing child abuse material, and he said the volume of arrests is rising very significantly. Across England and Wales, police arrest about 1,000 people a month, most of them men, for online child sexual abuse offences.

Turner said offenders on the dark web use sites that "resemble in style a regular porn site", with similar or identical search terms to surface websites. The difference, she said, is that the videos show real children being sexually abused. DC Pep Saladino said arrested men describe "a numbness to extreme material" and a desensitisation that leads them to a dark place, adding: "Often the men we arrest tell us they are glad to have been caught."

The West Mercia officers see so many young people, some in their early teens, that they are considering a pilot scheme sending civilians to visit children who view illegal material. Some cases involve sexting between teenagers; others involve teenagers exposed to violent images of child abuse through chat sites and forums. Smith said several forces are looking at the approach after a successful Surrey project called Solah. "We don't want to criminalise children, so if there are no aggravating factors like they are coercing others, then the police are not the best agency to provide safeguarding advice," he said.

DS Peter Wheeler said many young adults arrested started watching pornography as children. "They have escalated down the rabbit hole. Ultimately, we have to look at the big porn platforms. These are multimillion-pound companies," he said.

Clare McGlynn, a professor of law at Durham University and an expert on the legal regulation of pornography, said she was concerned about online misinformation suggesting the law polices what individuals keep on their phones. "This is about platforms removing very egregious content," she said, describing the normalisation of strangulation, incest and adults acting out child abuse being pushed by algorithms for profit. She also questioned what X would do about horrific material accessible on its platform.

The law was sparked by a report by the Conservative peer Gabby Bertin, which called for a new regulatory body for the pornography industry. McGlynn said the role could go to the British Board of Film Classification and called Ofcom a lethargic regulator. An Ofcom spokesperson said the watchdog must consult on changes to its guidance and codes, with new legal duties taking effect once updates are complete and a consultation planned for the first half of 2027. They said Ofcom is already engaging with platforms and, in the first 18 months of the Online Safety Act, has investigated more than 100 platforms and issued fines totalling more than £7m against 11 providers.

Vicky Young of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, which runs the Stop It Now helpline, welcomed the ban. "Thousands of people who contact our Stop It Now helpline tell us that extreme pornography has played a role in their pathway to viewing illegal sexual images of children. We're pleased to see this ban because it will make children safer," she said.