Worthing paedophile just the tip of the iceberg with child sexual abuse cases yet to reach peak in UK

Jordan Croft, right, outside Lewes Crown Court. The 26-year-old admitted forcing 26 victims aged 12-22, most of whom were children, to send photos and videos of them performing sexual and degrading acts on themselves and others.

The threat from child sexual abuse ‘continues to grow’ in the UK, with up to 850,000 people posing ‘varying degrees of sexual risk to children’.

That’s according to Chris Farrimond – the National Crime Agency (NCA) director for child sexual abuse.

“The threat from child sexual abuse continues to grow,” he said. “It hasn’t reached its peak yet.

"The volume and severity of offending continues to increase – as well as the complexity of us being able to tackle it.

"We estimate there is approximately 550,000 to 850,000 people in the UK who pose varying degrees of sexual risk to children. It’s right across the spectrum but that’s a huge number.”

Chris Farrimond was speaking during a media briefing, regarding the sentencing of Worthing paedophile Jordan Croft.

Croft, 26, admitted forcing 26 victims aged 12-22, most of whom were children, to send photos and videos of them performing sexual and degrading acts on themselves and others. He was sentenced at Lewes Crown Court last Friday (November 11) to 18 years in prison, and a further eight years on licence.

During the briefing, Mr Farrimond spoke about the wider context of the threat of child sexual abuse, as well as the work being carried out to tackle it.

Children at risk anywhere on the web

Mr Farrimond said technology has ‘brought massive benefits’ to the world but it also ‘really assists offenders who have a sexual interest in children’.

He said it is a ‘commonly held misconception’ that children are only at risk on the dark web and they are otherwise safe.

"That’s absolutely not the case,” he said. “Child sexual abusers will start where they can find children. Perfectly normal young teenage messaging can very quickly become very nasty.

“Individuals can start having a child sexual abuse or enhance their interest simply by viewing online abuse material. We’ve proved it is still absolutely possible for individuals to achieve that in just three clicks of a mouse.

"Within that, they can find other people with a similar mindset and encourage each other. It suddenly normalises the behaviour and they share tactics and material. That accelerates the behaviour and the speed of which people can abuse more easily.”

Mr Farrimond said people in the UK are sometimes associated with the abuse of children in other countries, including the Philippines, in exchange for money. In some cases, offenders ‘seek to travel overseas for contact abuse’.

The NCA is part of a virtual global taskforce, made up of 12 different countries. Together, they agree on ‘concrete measures to improve law enforcement response’.

He said: “There's a lot of it going on. We can't arrest our way out of this – there are too many there.

"It's not possible to take enforcement action against all of them at the same time. We have to prioritise and identify those who pose the greatest risk.

"We also need to find ways of reducing that number and make the opportunity [to offend] much smaller.”

Record number of arrests

The NCA coordinates law enforcement responses right across the UK and has ‘upped its technical capability’ to catch offenders.

By March 2022, the NCA and UK policing teams had secured a record 10,181 arrests and voluntary attendances over the previous year, Mr Farrimond revealed. This was up eight per cent on the previous year.

They also safeguarded and protected a record 14,500 children – up 15 per cent on the previous year.

“That's just scratching the surface,” Mr Farrimond added. “Currently, every month we are making 800 arrests across UK and nearly 1,200 children are being safe-guarded.

“We are doing a lot but it's still not enough. It cannot only be seen as a law enforcement duty, it just can't be. We won't fix it that way.

"The government is doing a lot to try and bring further measures in. From our point of view, this is absolutely required.

“There has to be a way of getting safety features involved to protect children. It can be done but will take a lot of effort.”

Mr Farrimond said the NCA is ‘doing a lot of work in the education area’ and have ‘produced some really good material’.

He added: “The programme our CEOP Education team has got (www.thinkuknow.co.uk) really tries to point out the dangers and explain how easy it can be for things to go wrong.