Latest / Halliday’s Podcast / Paul Stanfield, CEO Childlight, Confronting the Global Emergency of Child Sexual Exploitation

Transcript

Paul Stanfield, CEO Childlight, Confronting the Global Emergency of Child Sexual Exploitation · Halliday’s Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I first met today's guest in twenty seventeen when he joined Interpol as director of the organization's Organised and Emerging Crime Program, just up the Rhone from where we're recording today.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Not long after his departure from the organization in 2020, this proud Scouser helped establish Childlight, the Global Child Safety Institute, hosted by the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and founded with support from the Human Dignity Foundation.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: What began as a clear recognition that the world was flying blind on the true scale of child sexual exploitation and abuse has become one of the most important evidence-driven efforts in the field, built deliberately around the currency that defines this moment.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Data.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Childlight's core insight is simple and powerful.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Without coherent, trusted data, no one can see the full picture, let alone act on it.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Its Into the Light index has shown that more than 300 million children a year are affected by technology facilitated sexual exploitation and abuse.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Roughly 10 every second.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: One in four children face unwanted or pressured sexual interactions online before they turn 18.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Live streamed abuse can be bought for less than the price of a soft drink.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, AI is accelerating both the threat through deep fakes and generated child sexual abusive material and the potential solutions.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Offenders adapt faster than legislation.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Organized crime profits, with some platforms benefiting from the traffic.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: The cost of inaction is measured in children's lives.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Law enforcement alone cannot fix this.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Childlight treats it as a preventable global public health emergency that requires data infrastructure, responsible AI, and genuine community across governments, tech, companies, academia, civil society, and frontline responders.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Poor Stanfield brings three decades of senior operational experience from the UK National Crime Agency in Africa to directing Interpol's global organized crime program, together with a relentless focus on turning insight into impact.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: We've wanted to have him on the podcast for some time and hope that this conversation, although difficult, will help raise awareness and attention to these vital issues.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, welcome back to Leon.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Ross, always a pleasure to be back in Leon.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: How does it feel?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's great.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I went to um one of my old haunts uh last night to watch the football and watch Liverpool uh Yes, Liverpool's convincing 6-3 victory.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and I'm a Liverpool fan, so uh that was a nice start to uh my return to Leon.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was in Liverpool.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'd just come back from uh a week in the UK actually and visiting friends and family in Liverpool.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um wonderful city.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And what always strikes me about Liverpudlians is um they always say our Ross, you know, or our shane, or and I always found that remarkable that they sort of claim you as one of theirs.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Once you're you know, once you're friends and once they trust you, you're one of them.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it sort of builds into that ethos, I think.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's you should never you'll never walk alone, right?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Which uh I'm hoping we'll get back uh what we'll get into in this podcast.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Last night I was actually surrounded by palace fans because Crystal Palace are playing playing Leon tonight.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: So the pub I was in, it was surrounded by uh palace fans.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I was uh in a minority last night.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's all right.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, good luck to Leon tonight.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, let's get into it.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: So take us back.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: If we can start um with your departure from Interpol.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: What was the specific gap in data and technology and cross-sector collaboration that convinced you as an independent institute like Childlight was necessary rather than continuing um in existing institutions?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I could see that child sexual exploitation abuse was a hidden pandemic.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: It occurred in in every country, every culture, uh, required a global response to deal with it.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I knew from where I sat within law enforcement, across the security field, uh, that this was massive, but we simply didn't know the true scale.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't know the true nature of what was happening.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: We just knew this was massive, it was everywhere it was happening, and we just didn't have the figures.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can't uh if you can't you can't see it, if you can't count it, then you can't invest in something that you can't see, you can't count, you can't measure.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: And as a result, this remained what I what I refer to as a hidden population.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I put it in the same category of you know, COVID-19.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um the only thing is this was invisible.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Where does COVID-19 force governments to act?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because people were dying in care homes, people were dying in the streets, people had to do something about it, people were terrified.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: This similar thing was happening behind closed doors right in every single community.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: But because it was hidden, that people weren't reporting on it, that you didn't have you know these things happening in public view, it could largely go um, you know, remaining uh hidden and people not acting upon it.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I would really wanted to shine a light on her and to actually illuminate what was really happening so that people couldn't use ignorance as a defense for inaction, and that's where it started from.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: I know from your time you know at Interpol um, you know, what it was like to work with you and and what people um felt about that.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I've seen the facility in Edinburgh, which is very impressive.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: But how how did you sort of um you know put that um that team together?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um bear in mind that it's a it's a global institute, it's not a national institute.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: It is and it requires a global response.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and we're very fortunate because we wanted this to be a global institute.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: Whilst we're based in the UK, we don't represent the UK, and we have research um partners right across the world in the Philippines, Colombia, Australia, elsewhere, uh including in China, the US.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we also have a Global Data Fellows uh program, which we have an experts uh across the world who support us, who validate our research, who give us that regional local context.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um so we're seeing it through the eyes globally, not since simply through Western eyes.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: But what I'd like to do, Ross, in terms of your audience, if the if to understand you know the power of data, I'd like to go back as to why, because it will help understand why we set up child like the way that we have.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: So my background has always worked on serious and organized crime.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, throughout my career, that's what I've really focused on.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I try to make things really simple in terms of explaining to the public, to members of the team, uh, what it is we're trying to achieve.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: And organized crime is simply about two things it's about bad people who are motivated by money.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And to be able to then tackle it, you need to identify who those people are, and you need to be able to track the funds, because by following the funds, you will also map the organized crime groups and you'll identify their business model as to why they operate in the first place in terms of the power, the greed, the money.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's about people, it's about money.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I always worked on those very simple things.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's less about the commodity, because an organized crime group will focus one day on moving firearms, another day on moving drugs, forced labour, and so on and so forth.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: So this was about people, this was about it.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the always approach.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: I worked overseas for about 15 years of my service when I was working in the serious and organised crime agency, national crime agency, worked in places like uh Amsterdam, dealing with uh British organised crime groups who were operating from there, uh, right over to Africa, where I was responsible and representing the UK National Crime Agency, where we had staff in lots of embassies uh across the across the continent in places like Somalia, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, uh dealing with a wide range of threats that were facing the UK.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we were there for, to look at those threats and work with partners to prevent those threats coming to the shores of the UK.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: So the things that you can think of, it would be drug traffickers, it would be firearms, it would be money launderers, it would be um narco-terrorists, all these things, serious and organised crime, criminal groups operating globally, transnational organised crime, impacting on the UK, Europe.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we looked to work with partners to go upstream and say, how can we actually prevent some of this happening?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: In um when I was the serious and organised crime agency, I had just uh finished um 12 months focusing on uh Russia, where I was I'd been learning um Russian for um 12 months, uh not very well, very, very hard language.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: That didn't work out for political reasons, uh, nothing to do with uh from a law enforcement point of view.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I was redirected to Africa.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I arrived in Nairobi and we then became the National Crime Agency, and this would have been in 2013, in October 2013, new government, new name, so moved from soccer to the National Crime Agency.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: But the UK Home Office said, Paul, we we've got another um government priority, which is child sex exploitation and abuse.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, I was tasked with coming up with a strategy about how we would work towards that um Home Office priority, in addition to the drug traffickers, money launders, nothing else.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're investigating serious and organised crime, it's what I call proactive policing.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: You go out and you have to take do methods to understand what's operating, who the individuals, how do they move their money, this type of thing, working with government.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's very covert, and you work with um a number of agencies that also remain semi-covert in effect.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to child sexual exploitation abuse, that's dealt with normally by frontline police responders, social workers, others.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so the partners that we we would built up over many years of dealing with serious organised crime across the globe, all of a sudden we had to engage with other partners.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing I did when I said, Well, before you can tackle any form of organised crime, you first need to understand it.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you don't understand it, you've got no way of then dealing with what is the solution, uh, what will work to actually prevent it happening in the first place.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And to understand it, you need access to data and not just any data, it's got to be, you know, relevant data, timely data, robust, um, robust data, and and therefore, and if you know that's what you need, that's when you start building your strategy around okay, where is the data I need?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: But you also need not only data, you need to be able to analyse that that data, make sense of it, and then join the dots together with other data sets.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you need then to be able to translate it into something that's meaningful, that people can do something with, and that's where information becomes intelligence.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: So intelligence is simply information where you add value to and it becomes intelligence.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, you also, because I talked earlier before, you need to have a financial strategy, it's following the money because this is the this this is the uh the business model, but ultimately it's about data.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, where do you get that data?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you can't see it, then you know you can't even think about how you then intervene and deal with it.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so the first thing I did in relation to this this threat was to scan the the environment and say, what do we know, what don't we know?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I then started talking to police contacts across Africa, and I found there wasn't one dedicated unit in any country in Africa that dealt with child sex exploitation abuse.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Not one.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And as a result, when I asked them what what has happened, what's the scale of it, they couldn't tell me.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: There was no data.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: And as a result, this was that's why I say it was hidden uh population.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: And because it's not been identified as a particular priority, the investment that goes into into policing into frontline responders isn't focused around this, it's focused on the things that we see.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the explosion that goes off in Nairobi, the the so we deal with terrorism or what's happening with al-Shabaab in Somalia, we see the drugs come onto the streets, people want to do something about it.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but this was you know hidden, hidden populations, uh say, as we refer to are children.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we didn't have any of this data, but when we started to look, it was everywhere.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And beforehand, because I weren't looking, I didn't see it.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: But as soon as I started uh looking, it was everywhere.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And initially we thought it was your typical British or Dutch person coming, what would be called the sex tourism into places like Mombasa, into the beach, and talking to children and this.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't, of course, there were those people, but it was Kenyan on Kenyon, Ugandan on Ugandan.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was everywhere, it was rife.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I was horrified.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I was horrified, it was a turning point for me because all my career we'd been working on serious and organised crime that was seen as the sexy side of policing, where we were spending billions and billions of dollars trying to identify and tackle people dealing with drugs, firearms, money laundering.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And yet the reason I joined the police all those years ago was to help the most vulnerable in society, and it doesn't become more vulnerable than children.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we were failing them, that I could actually say, there's nobody actually highlighting what's going on here.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the more I looked, and once you see it, you can't unsee it.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's horrendous, uh, the scale of it, and you want to do something about it.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what set me off and said, well, first of all, we need to have a strategy that focuses on data to be able to collect it, to be able to analyse it, to be able to translate it.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: What happened, just as a few examples, we wanted to highlight a few cases.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: So my immediate strategy, and this is really basic, bring it back to the basics.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: When I got to know about this, we identified, as an example, a British Airways pilot who was using their position to access a charity to abuse children.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because, unbeknownst to me at the time, a pilot didn't have to go and stay in the same accommodation as other people on the airline because they had certain privileges and they used their position.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what happens with paedophiles.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: They use their position, the access they have to abuse children in plain sight, but people don't see it because you don't really want to see it, don't expect it.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: We've seen um ex-school teachers who were setting up charities who were convicted in the UK for child abuse, but there's no checks and balances in places like Africa, nobody looking at it, so they could just work with impunity and do it.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: So because I was looking at it from a UK perspective at that time, we came across some of this data and I said, right, the first thing we need to do is when we look at managing risk, is the danger to an individual.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, better life is always priority number one before evidence and everything else.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: The priority three-step was we will intervene to protect children from immediate and ongoing harm, regardless, even if that just means intervening, stopping it happening, and the children are safeguarded.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: The second is we will pursue, and because I'm representing the UK at this time, any UK national who's doing committing these offences, we will pursue them relentlessly and bring them to justice.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then the third thing is we will build local capacity because it doesn't exist in any country in Africa at this time.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: That was 2013.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: So start with the first one, simple.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Any opportunity we get, we're intervening and putting pressure on people, intervene, do something about this.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: The second is is uh more difficult because working in the context, and this will bring me back to the Interpol, is police across the world and governments are not very good at doing international investigations.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because you take a country from Europe, they uh they are bound by the European Court of Human Rights, they can't share intelligence that's going to uh breach those human rights, and therefore countries with a dodgy uh human rights background and everything else can't share it.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: What happens if the person detention without trial gets the death penalty and all that?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: So often people decide not to share information than share it because of the fears of sharing information, and you've got international legal less requests.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: But you've also then got corruption in a country where I've seen um people who are committing offences against children paying away out, paying off police officers to do this, and it was rife.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um not just across Africa, right across the world, um, where they could pay off.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: So this is this impunity was driving uh this further and further and further.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: But we had legislation in the UK that was produced 10 years earlier, 2003, the sexual offences legislation that allowed you to go after any British national or anybody who'd been resident in the UK for, I think it was two years at the time, who were committing these types of offences against children anywhere in the world, we could bring them back to the UK and prosecute them in the UK.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: But it'd never been used anywhere in the world, and this was in 10 years later.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I said here in Kenya, we identified a case, and it was a British national, ex-schoolmaster, who'd been convicted in the UK of indecent images of um children being sexually abused, Kenyan children.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: There was no investigation done at the time by the UK authorities at Kenya because of the concerns I've just said.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was easier.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: They just dealt with him in the UK for possession of indecent photographs.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: He got time in prison.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's how serious it was for him, because he don't always get prison for photographs.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: He came out and he had a number of restrict travel restriction orders not to travel to places like to Kenya.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Through fraud, he got a number of documentation from authorities in Kenya to say he could come out to Kenya, he wouldn't be working with children, they could manage their risk, and he had a visa to travel and work in Kenya.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: He went to the magistrate court, the police weren't notified, so these are some of the checks and balances that weren't in place at the time.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: He goes out to Kenya, sets up a school, sets up a charity, street children.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: He systematically goes round picking up street children who he chooses to sexually abuse and rape.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody does anything about it because the police aren't looking at it, and if they do, they get paid off.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so the story which is which again a turning point for me, and it still um makes me gulp when I tell when I tell a story, is the um unreported world, uh, Channel 4 News.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: We're doing an investigation in a place called Gilgil.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Gilgil is a garrison town, it was in the centre of Kenya, very rural, you know, didn't really have electricity.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was a railway town that got there.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: And there was um pre-election violence before I turned up in Kenya.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: There was a lot of uh violence um over elections, and people terrified what was going to happen to them.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: They went to this town thinking they're gonna be safe because it was a garrison town, and a lot of the adults were slaughtered and it left a lot of uh children um homeless.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: So you go there full of street children.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: There was a lady called Mary Colson who set up a charity called Restart, which is which is based in Gilgill.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: She could see this happening, and uh she tried to protect these children and she tried to tell the authorities, but nobody did anything about it.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: And Unreported Well, Channel 4 News, we're working there to do an um a documentary research in relation to um poverty.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: But they met a young young lad, and this is on YouTube, you can still see this uh video, and there's a young uh young um Kenyan uh boy, only about seven years of age, he starts crying.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And they ask him what's up, and he says, terrified about the mazungo, and the mozungo is a term for white people, the white white person.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: As the mozungo who comes across overnight and he's terrified, and they're saying, Well, what's up?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Why crying?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: What's what's the problem?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: And he realised there's something more to it.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the easiest way to describe it to listeners is think when you were when you were a child and your parents told you to get in when it was getting dark at night because the bogeyman may get you go to bed on time.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, these two children had nowhere to go, there was nowhere secure, there's nowhere safe for them to go.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And their bogeyman was this British guy.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And overnight time, all the lights went out, it was pitch black, no electricity.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: He had a white land roll over, and he would drive round overnight time looking for children that he would prey on.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: He was their bogeyman, and he would identify someone, he would pick them up, and he would take them back, and he would take them into his bed and he would rape them.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he did this with impunity for at least 18 months without anything.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: This was one of those when we started to look, we got to know about it, and all of a sudden I said we need to do something.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'd only been in country a few weeks by this time, and as I say, the the amount of cases that were coming forward, it was when we started to look they were there.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I then working with the with the UK um Child Exploitation Online Protection Agency as it was, within the National Crime Agency uh as is, um, I said we need to do something about this.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then we went through all those concerns.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, why don't you just report it to the Kenyan police?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the Kenya police will investigate it, then explain, and they don't have the capacity, or they the the way that they do an investigation is to the same standard, there's the uh concerns about corruption, then it's human rights, what happens if this person's detention without trial, if he gets off, he's more of a danger.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And can we guarantee there's a good investigation going to take place?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I wasn't convinced there was.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we talked to the Crown Prosecution Service, very similar.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is why why is this an issue for us?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: This is an issue for the Kenya police understanding there.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember speaking to a senior government civil servant uh official who was over at the time, and I said to the question, I said, I've got a question to you as an audience who was taking questions and answers.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think we have a duty of care to children in Africa who are being sexually abused by British nationals?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, I don't believe we have a legal duty of care, I believe we have a moral duty of care to do maybe do something about it.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, I would argue and say we have a legal duty of care because this sex offender, this paedophile, is a danger to all children across the world, including in the UK.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: He has chosen to come here because he thinks he can get away with it, but he could turn up in the UK anytime in the future, and he could go on to offend children.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a we've got an opportunity to gather evidence here and get this person brought to justice and safeguard all these children.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: From it.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think we should do that because you turn back up in the UK and he comes back to the UK and goes on to rape a child or murder a child in the UK.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we could have done something about it.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: Can you stand up in front of the newspapers and say, like, we could have done something about it, but choose not to?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: I then said we have legislation in place for 10 years.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's never been used anywhere in the world.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: What was the point of creating that legislation if we're never going to use it?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I made myself very, very unpopular as a result of taking this stance and put a pen to paper to say we will not get a proper investigation done in Kenya if we just leave this as simple and I'm not prepared to stand by and allow this to happen.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: So Kelvin Leigh, who's now working for Childlight, as one of our global uh one of our uh investigators, he came out as the investigator, and his job back in the UK was to investigate overseas offences.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: He came over West Mercia Police, did an investigation with the Kenya police.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: Long story short, but we we had children using this legislation I described.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: We got this guy back into the UK.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: He went to Birmingham Crown Court.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: We had street children given evidence from Kenya and all the problems with that.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: We had witness intimidation issues we had to deal with and so on and so forth.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um he tried to discredit the street children, but what we did is we'd also identified people who were now adults in the UK who he had abused when he'd been a teacher in the UK in a private school, and they'd come forward, very brave people had come forward who were now doctors, solicitors.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: So because they were willing to give evidence, he threw his hand in, but he felt that he could actually get away with these Kenyan children.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: He got sentenced to 17 years in prison, which uh isn't a massive.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got that conviction now in Kenya, you get a life in prison.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And we said, let's go after his money.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go after his money and use it to build some capacity here in Kenya so actually we can train the Kenyan authorities to do this themselves.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we did.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now, unfortunately, that money was put into a trust to help the street children get education in FNL.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: So Mary Colson had talked about before, became the guardian of this uh funding and made sure that these children got um education in FNL.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I've met some of them since, and they've grown up to be great adults who've gone on to university and all kinds, which is a great end of the story.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh one young lad, 16, because of what happened, and his parents were telling him, or not parents, sorry, um others were telling them not to give evidence to Crown Court.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: When he finished giving evidence in Crown Court, he went and hung himself from a tree and uh committed um suicide because of the pressure that was on him at the time.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: So this was a horrible, horrible um story.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: But what we did going back to that strategy of we'll relentlessly pursue, we said, let's build some capacity.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what the UK said to me at the time, West Mercia Police, that spent, they spent about a million pounds doing this investigation.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: It was one individual, one individual, million pounds.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: They said, we can't do this again.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's killed our budget, we simply it's not sustainable.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I said to CR said to the UK government, if you give me some money, we will build something here in Kenya.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we did.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: We got 200,000 euros minimum.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: The UK government spending 4 million on police reform in the UK at the time, and not having any difference, in my view, to police reform.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: 200,000 over two years, and I also got Kelvin Leigh to come out to help set up this unit.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: We set up the first dedicated unit in Africa.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: Within six months, they addressed and safeguarded hundreds of children and brought perpetrators to justice that wouldn't have been brought to justice.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Within six months, it had a massive impact on children's lives.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: We then started saying, well, now we can replicate and we can scale this across Africa.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: I then was then told by the UK, look, we're not here to police the world.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: We have other priorities, other organised crime priorities.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, Paul, this is great, but we can't just do this.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time, no other countries were doing this.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: I contacted Europol.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was in touch with Interpol saying, look, can we get resources to do it?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: But as you know, Interpol and Europol don't you know second people to do investigations uh in this in this way.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I then heard that actually a result of doing this, um, Interpol were looking for the director of organised crime.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: And as part under the umbrella of organised crime is vulnerable communities, subdrive directorate of crimes against children.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was brought to my attention.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, you know, I don't want to choose where the child is from before we um commit an investigation or where the offender's from.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: I want to support all countries, protect the most vulnerable in society, the children, and bring perpetrators to justice wherever they are.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so I applied for the job at Interpol.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, the director got down to the last date, at which time I thought I'm gonna have to tell an UK National Crime Agency to apply for the job because they have to succumb me and they have to pay my salary.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I hadn't told them at the time.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd spent uh time in Moscow, I'd spent uh in our post, I'd spent the five years already beyond my time in Nairobi, and they wanted me back to the UK.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to the Home Office, and at the time it was around Brexit, and there was a fear of being chucked out of Europol.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I went and said, you know, we've got we haven't had anybody working from National Crime Agency or anything else at Interpol.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I said to them, if we get chucked out of Europol, who are you going to work through?
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because most of the time we were working through Europol and our liaison network, we weren't working through Interpol.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we weren't working through a global police organisation, we were working Europe, Europol, and through our global network of national crime agency officers in embassies around the world, through them, not Interpol at the time.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: Interpol through general inquiries like stolen motor vehicles, stuff like that, but not in terms of investigations.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, if we start a relationship with Interpol, we can, you know, we're not putting all our eggs in the Europol basket.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: So the Home Office got behind me, which convinced the NCA to support me, and then eventually got the post.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was offered the post.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: I then came into Interpol and we had something like 20 plus organised crime threats that we're looking at.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: So within Interpol at the time, there were three directorates there was the Organised Crime Directorate to Counterterrorism and Cyber.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so I like the organised crime, which was about 40% of all the resources at Interpol were focused within that directorate of organised crime.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Ranged everything from environmental crime all the way to drug trafficking and everything between.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: But they were all working in separate with separate objectives, aims and objectives, and working to different things.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: So when I arrived thinking, right, I'm coming here, I'm going to be dealing like big organisation with all this, and I don't see just Interpol as it's a thousand strong as an organization within a secretariat in in Leon.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we have got 196 Interpol member countries and we've got all the resources and assets available that those countries provide.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how I was looking at it, not just Interpol.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: With each country having a National Central Bureau, which is an Interpol office.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the Interpol.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then yes, and then it all plugged in.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we had an army of you know 196 countries that we could bring to the top.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: But when I arrived at Interpol, we weren't set up in a way, uh, we were very, very distinct.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: So going back to um my drive about the importance of data, what really attracted me to Interpol and what is the USP unique selling point for Interpol beyond everything else, I'm not convinced everybody still understands this yet, in Interpol and out of Interpol, is its ability to handle criminal data on behalf of 196 member countries.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's the only organisation the UN can't do it.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: All those bilateral agencies, whether it be the Drugs Enforcement Agency from the US, the BKA from Germany, Australia Federal Police, National Crime Agency.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: We have people in embassies working as police liaison officers across the world, but we don't operate in every country.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: Interpol operates in every country.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's got a national bureau, it's got a secure communications network to move data across into those countries at a flick of a switch or a button, and they can handle criminal data that you can't unless you're, you know, in the law enforcement agency.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I go in and say, right, this is brilliant because this is what we need.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: We need to be able to collect data, analyse data, translate data.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: What I found is that our focus wasn't on those things, it was very much on project-based information.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Some of it was to do with the cost because Interpol didn't have a massive amount of money.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it was set up.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing I then set up was to say, I don't it doesn't matter if you're dealing with drugs and sport, uh human trafficking, um movement of firearms.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: This goes back to this is bad people who are motivated primarily by money or require money to actually operate the business model.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I said I want everybody to focus on the collection of data in listening to your area, being able to analyse that data, and then being able to translate in a way that's meaningful that you can share that with member countries who can then do something with it.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um we weren't set up.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we weren't collecting data in a way.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: So Interpol, um, the challenge with Interpol, it was set up 100 years ago.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the rules of processing data means we share information between police agencies, but most of the data that we need isn't in the hands of police, it's in the hands of big tech, financial sector, private organizations.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to be able to get access to that data.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: And under the rules of processing data, it's very difficult for Interpol to do that unless it changes its rules.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to make the business case to say, look, we need to really think about collecting this data because this data is really enriching what we understand.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because before you can tackle it, you need to understand it and we need access to good data.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: But realize that unlike Europol, which is very big on criminal analysis files, analytical work files, Interpol wasn't so focused on the criminal analysis.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, there's no point having data if you can't make sense of it, because that also carries massive risk.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: You could be sat on stuff, you know, on a child being abused, you'd be you could be sat on it for 20 years or six months.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: And if you could have done something to prevent it, then all of a sudden there's a massive risk to you as an organization, FNL.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: I said, so we need to have better analysis in relation to it, collection analysis.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I did come across some challenges because this was really changing the way we operated because it acquired investment.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, well, we can make the case for investment because if we can show the benefit that we will have in terms of children safeguarded, perpetrators brought to justice.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't just looking at crimes against children, I had to look across everything, but this was the model.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: So using an example within the crimes against children, we didn't have a criminal analysis file.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: And we had an organization, I won't mention it, um, in case it's uh sensitive in terms of them shared information.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: They had lots of financial data that they believed was being used for um to sexually uh abuse children live streaming of and they wanted to share that with Interpol.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: Interpol one couldn't receive it because they were a police agency, but they didn't want to share it with eight countries, didn't want to politicise it, they wanted to share it with an organization that could receive it.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: Interpol, we can't receive it.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I also said, but if we did receive it, we can't analyse it.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: We can't make sense of it because the data was massive.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I but we do need that data and we do need to analyse it.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we found another way where they Sorry, Paul, this is under the child light umbrella now or something.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: No, sorry, this is Interpol.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: When I came to Interpol.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: When you first arrived, okay.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: So they were offering us all this data, but we couldn't receive it because we didn't have an information sharing agreement, and it weren't police.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: I see.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: So what we had to do is get them to send it through a National Central Bureau so first we could get it.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I said, but then there's a risk of us receiving it if we can't analyse and make sense of it.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: So we created the criminal analysis file, which I'm really proud of that we still have today.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time I was in the time I was here, we created nine criminal analysis files for a range of different threats so that when we started collecting the data, we could we could translate it.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: But to be able to do that, so I then met the funder, Human Dignity Foundation, and to my surprise, was funding almost 100% the crimes against children unit.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: And coming from Policing, because you're funded by the government, you don't normally have to go out and raise funding to implement a crime programme, a strategy.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: But Interpol, unfortunately, the way Interpol is set up, the funding comes in that Interpol can exist as a secretariat, and the crime programmes are largely funded by external funders.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now they could be the government of the UK through its aid agency, puts more money to deal with fisheries crime or something like this.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: But the funding wasn't there, so you had to go and find the funding.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: The Human Dignity Foundation funded Interpol over five years, about five million pounds, to set up a tune that had victim identification officers who could look at images of children coming through and say, we don't know in the world where they are, where could they be, and they'd work with police agencies to identify where that child possibly could be so they could do an investigation, safeguard the child, maybe bring the perpetrator to justice.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: So Human Dignity Foundation was funding that on the basis that after five years, Interpol would find other sustainable funding to do that.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the Human Dignity Foundation is a UK-based charity?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's a based uh Swiss Swiss-based.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the main funder uh headquarters was in was in Ireland.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um and he wanted to do some good through his funding that he'd had a foundation that he put approximately a hundred million uh in to do good around the world.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: He looked at Interpal and he remembered they said to Mick Moran was there at the time before my time, but people on this may know Mick Moran.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: He's now doing the child uh helpline in Ireland.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he was a police officer from the Guards Ireland, and John had said to him, the funder, John had said, look, if I double the money that you've got, what will that impact have?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: So if at the moment on your ICSE database, the Interpol Child Sex Exploitation Database, there was something like um 30,000 children, 10,000 perpetrators identified.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, Well, if we could double the money, does that mean you could do 60,000, you know, children, 20,000 perpetrators brought to justice?
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: He was thinking simple terms, or is that just a drop in the ocean?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Am I making any difference investing my money?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody could tell him.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't know the scale of it.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: So he invested and he was funding everything from the victim ID operators officers.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: I arrived in Tinterpol full of ambition, driven by what I'd seen in Africa and what I wanted to do around crimes against children, but recognising I had a big responsibility, but this was my real passion, is my opportunity to do something.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: And still very much blind, as you say, you don't know what the scale of the actual issue is.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that this was being funded by an external funder also told me that globally, within priorities of policing, this still wasn't seen as a priority.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because if it was, we wouldn't re we would be putting core funding into this area, not relying on a foundation to fund it.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely right.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: So strict So just on that, how many how many countries, how many governments um funding Interpol were prioritizing crimes against children?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, countries don't.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: They rely on Interpol to prioritize what Interpol um focuses on.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: My reflection at the time was a lot of the funding Interpol had was very project-based.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: So you could have an aid agency in Norway, for example, say we're interested in you doing something on forestry crime.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: So they would give millions of pounds or euros to deal with it, and we'd build a team around that funding to environmental crime.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it wasn't what I would say, it wasn't risk-focused, it wasn't based.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I like to I I say within childlights, we do not follow the money.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we follow the risk.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: But no governments were necessarily funding projects within crimes against children.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: Not really.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: Some may say, look, we'd like you to do so.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: The UK may say, look, Interpol can you help us with um illegal migration because that's a particular priority for us.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: And they may say, we'll invest in some funding to do something a bit more.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: But in large, a lot of it was very project-based in relation to how this was happening.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: So Human Dignity Foundation said this is a priority.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if someone funds it, and this is one of the issues I have about aid being provided to countries like where it was in Africa, I sometimes think they can do more harm than good on occasions because the country or the organization relies on, gets used to having that money and doesn't have to find money itself and can leave others to fund it on the programs.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: The challenge I had, I came in the fullest ambition.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: We had a nice unit within the Crimes Against Children doing really good work, and the funding was coming to an end, and we hadn't looked for other funding or hadn't found other secure funding, and the funding was about to stop.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: I reached out to the funder because Dr.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Climax, who is the person behind this, had set up the foundation, but he wasn't part of the foundation.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: He had an executive director who ran it.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: Executive director said to me, Look, the funding has come to an end, decisions have been made.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I reached out to John.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was quite funny because I was in Interpol and I said, I just need to go to a flight to meet a funder because I need to get investment into this programme.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time, my flight was actually refused.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't seen as a priority for me to be able to travel.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: And being as a director, which is like the most senior person within organised crime, and I'd always manage my own budgets.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: To be told, I can't just jump on a flight to the UK to go and discuss it with a potential investor to talk about millions.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: I found that really odd.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll say this now because I'm not part of Interpol, and if any of the management um the Secretary General was listening now, uh may not be aware of this, but I took leave and I paid for my own flight and I went to meet him because this was really important.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: He met me, we had a couple of hours together, he was sold, and he said, Look, tell me what you need me to do.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I need you to keep the money invested whilst I find other alternative funding.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now we became um um friends in terms of you know wanting to do really good, and he invested another five million into Interpol to keep it going for the next five years, and we started working on it, and I wanted us to then start.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I set up a global task force because I realized to be able to tackle crimes against children across globally and child sex exploitation abuse, you can't do it alone.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so we needed to do around the world, we needed access to data, we needed access to capability, we needed access to people who understood the technology train and so on.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I looked out a number of organisations who are already working in this space.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: So National Centre for Miss Exploited Children in the US, they handle a lot of data from referrals from Meta and other companies.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um they make referrals.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: You have UNICEF, who obviously focused on children, how can they help bring capability to support this, United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime and others.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I reached out to them, they all wanted to be part of it.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: Let's set up a task force.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: Interpol can be the global law enforcement body.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: We've come together, we start mapping out what's really happening, we start looking at interventions, and that's why the importance of the data is once you can map and you can see what's happening, you can then see where the vulnerabilities are, where the risks are, but also where the opportunities are to do something effectively.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when the strategy comes in about how you do it.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like organized crime.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd say CSEA is no different from any organised crime.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: The key enablers are you know technology, financial flows, facilitators around at a global level.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is serious and organised crime.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: People make money off it, billions and billions.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: So if you look at it through that context, um you can you can adapt the strategies that exist uh for that same thing.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we did.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: Now, unfortunately, COVID occurred.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: I then cut my time with Interpol short and I'd returned to 2020.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I went back to the UK and I was tasked with um by my Director General to set up a new international capability for the UK.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: So when we'd set up the National Crime Agency, Serious and Organised Crime Agency, and others, rather than I had come from the policing, we brought together customs, border police, uh policing all together into one agency.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: But we'd never actually started from scratch, we just joined EFM together and said, what would an international capability look like?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I was delighted because I thought this is what's needed.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because most police officers in the UK and across the world have got no idea about how to go about doing international inquiries because most of the day they're doing it, but most of their investigations, certainly at a senior serious level, involve international inks to it.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Most people, most police officers in the UK won't know, will have heard of Interpol, won't know what Interpol does.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: They'll mix it up with Europol.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've had many people say, Oh, you're based in Brussels.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no, Europol is based in The Hague, Interpol is based in Leon, Interpol is based, is responsible for 196 global countries, including all Europol countries, and Europol is based on Europe, gets its money from European.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: Most people don't know.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then the national bureaus within a country can range from in the UK, it's about 300 people working in an international crime bureau.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: In Tanzania, it's it's a one person who goes and checks the computer every day and see if there's any notices.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, most people don't even know what the National Bureau is and how to do an international inquiry.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, this is the challenge.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: So when we talk about um international police and cooperation, NLs, there's still a real lack of understanding about first of all, how to do investigations uh globally and how to about how to bring all that data together, so the collection of data and NFNLs.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Which takes me on to onto Childlight and how I'd done that.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm conscious I've done a lot of a lot of talking to to explain the context.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: No, not at all.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean I haven't I haven't wanted to interrupt you, um, you know, given given the subject, but um no, please.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: So so childlights, um, I was what you call a very frustrated.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Law enforcement officer.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: I could see the true horror of what was happening, but I couldn't articulate things in a way that got governments to act.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: Partly because, as a police officer, there's only certain much so I can say the communications team and everything else, whether it be an Interpol, whether it be the National Crime Agency, will tell me what I can and I can't say.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's publicly sensitive, don't want to offend other member countries or anything else.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you can't speak You don't want to upset the hierarchy.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: Can't speak troops to power.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: You can't.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: And also across the world, whether we like it or not, police aren't always trusted.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, different countries have different relationships, the member, you know, the communities have different relationships with the police.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: And some simply aren't trusted.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's corruption, there's all kinds.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: So when police say things, people don't know whether they can trust what's coming out of the police.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do we actually get governments to do something about it?
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because governments won't invest in a problem such as sexual exploitation abuse simply because there's a moral imperative to do so.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: There has to be a good financial rationale, and also, you know, why spend money on something where the public isn't asking for something to be done because the public don't know about it, because it's hidden.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been said to me within law enforcement, which um is unacceptable, but nevertheless it's been said is don't turn that stone over because we're not sure we want to see what's beyond that stone.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: I like to turn the stone over, which again doesn't always make me popular, and it's a bit like corruption.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: The best way to deal with corruption is to shine a light on it.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: And when you shine a light on the rats or on the vermin, they will disappear, and yes, they'll go somewhere else, but you keep them on the toes and say if you shine a light on it, it's much more that it's difficult for people to operate in plain sight when their eyes are on.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: So taking that so taking that in the same way, child light.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: So Dr.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: Climax said to me, Paul, um if this is as big as what you tell me, if it's as and this is when he I was still at Interpol going into back into the National Crime Agency, if this is really as bad, because he he'd heard me saying, John, this is terrible, this is much bigger than than we know.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: I did some analysis on the data.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I did some analysis on on data.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we just use it African continents.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: Less than one percent of all the data held within Interpol databases is from the continent of Africa.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm saying, well, that tells us there's either a lack of data, people don't trust sharing the data, we're not not even thinking about collecting it, so that's why it's important to do it.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: When we look at our the XC database, the the the flagship uh database for crimes against children, I did some analysis, and over the 14-year period, the amount of data that had gone into that database was equivalent to one year of the information that had gone into the National Centre for Miss and Exploited Children.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that was just that's just one data set.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we knew that actually what we had, we we could only see a fraction of what was happening globally.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I because I sat with when I sat with Empleason, I could see um the scale of what was happening across the globe uh through intelligence, you know, that wasn't public always publicly available.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I said this is massive.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: And John was saying, well, if it's really that big, why aren't we treating it as a global public health issue, such as HIV AIDS and and um COVID?
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: And as I said earlier, because John, people aren't dying in care homes like COVID, people aren't dying in the streets forcing the government to act, it's hidden.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: And he described to me, he so he was is a self-made um person, he set up his own company uh from pharmaceutical company, uh Icon is the is the main one he has.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and he said when HIV AIDS was was uh uh was well known in the public eye, early 90s, he said when we all came together as a community, pharmaceuticals, health, others, and we forgot who we worked for for the moment, and we had what we call a Chatham House rule come in, let's just talk, leave our organizations at the door, what can be done about HIV AIDS?
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: Very, very quickly we found solutions.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: He says, and within 18 months, we found the first antivirals that were able to come to market uh to help people subject to HIV AIDS and people that are now living a healthy life who have HIV AIDS.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: Jordan Covid, able to get the Pfizer drugs and others out to market at pace.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: He said, when we came together as a community, say we have to do something, it's amazing what we can do.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, we need to do the same with child sexual exploitation and abuse, but we need to illuminate it because it's hidden.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: Says, Great, how do we do that?
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now he believes, uh said, let's go to find an institution, a research institute, that can help us get that data validated so it's credible, that people can rely on it to make better informed decisions, and we can get out there because once you've got the data and you can see it, then you can start thinking about how you can do something about it.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: And also, we wanted to compel governments that this wasn't an option.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_01: You had to do something about it.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: And as a duty occurred, and if you can get the evidence base, then all of a sudden people have to do something about it.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: So at that time, I was just an advisor to him with others, and he was looking for a university, and I said, Well, if you have a university in the UK, I'll be able to link them to law enforcement data that normally researchers wouldn't have access to.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I started through the negotiations with the University of Edinburgh, and all of a sudden that comes with concern because it's easy to do research and come out in five years' time with a prevalent study about what is the scale of the threat across the world takes five years.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, five years' time, it's five years out of date, and people like me in law enforcement would never read it, and it's too late.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_01: I said you also we need to get you access to data that's um reliable, valid, it's happening, you know, it's timely, it's happening today.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: But that causes comes with massive risk because if you see that data, you can't just ignore it.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because if a child is at immediate ongoing risk of harm, you need to do something about it.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we can get access to that type of data, but we need to be working with partners such as Interpol to be able to get that information to countries so they can do something about it because there's a risk.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you're combining academic rigour with the operational experience that you bring as well as Interpol, right?
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you're combining with the philanthropic with the funding.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time, Dr.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: Climax, he'll tell you this himself, so I'm not saying anything that he wouldn't say publicly, but I think he was frustrated with universities, he feels that they operate at glacial pace take a long time.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so I said at the time, when I looked at the research that was going to be taken, it was a bunch of research.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: What normally happens is people see money, and at the time it was about five million or so being uh awarded to do a piece of research to say what is the true scale of child sex exploitation abuse, the prevalence, how often does it happen and where, and so on.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: How do we bring that data together?
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: Big, big, big ask, not so simple to do.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: But he was asking the university.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: So they come up with concept notes and they'll say, Oh, we'll do this piece of research over five years.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: They'll give you this.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say five years is too long, children can't wait, it's not just a strapline.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: We need to be a bit more dynamic.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I said to John, let's um, I can help you.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: It really needs a clear purpose vision mission, because you really need to focus people's minds as to what we're doing here and what we're trying to achieve.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: And your funding should be seen as an investment that we actually then scale once we show what's possible because we can't do this alone, we can't do it just through one university.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: So we started having this conversation, and a member at the time, and he said, I said, I'll write it for you the purpose vision mission.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Paul, you're too busy and that's too much to ask for you with National Crime Agency.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: He said, John, it'll take me 20 minutes.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: I've been talking to you now, I've known about that time, three or four years.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, the purpose is um, we will create this institute, is there to protect children from sexual exploitation and violence.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's not about research, it's about protecting children, and that's what I've got to be in the mind.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: If everybody's working on this, the research is and everybody else is the so what question.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that research needs to lead to protecting children.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing is we need to take a very data-driven, evidence-based approach to understanding both the true scale and the prevalence so that this is no longer seen as an issue that's left to the police to deal with, that this can actually be prevented, it's not inevitable.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: We can prevent this happening if we can actually map out and see how it's happening because we can identify opportunities to intervene to stop it happening in the first place.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's not inevitable.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_01: And we look at offline and um online and offline, and on like online, you know, you could fix that tomorrow online, a flick of a switch.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because everything that exists online is allowed to exist because platforms allow it to exist.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_01: So if you really wanted to, the solution is quite simple.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: Stop it happening if you want to put algorithms to the test and and remove it.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: And people may ask and you may ask the question, why isn't that happening?
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: But offline, you also need to look at both.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: I said, but we need to take that very data-driven, evidence-based approach to understanding it, because only by understanding it do we then start coming up with solutions.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: Today, we are dealing with it's only a deal with police officers to deal with.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: And as I said, in 2013, 13, and much hasn't changed today, is not one country had a dedicated unit in Africa until we built it in Kenya.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're relying on police to deal with this across the world, and Africa isn't the only continent that's not dealing with this, I would say at least 80% of Interpol member countries aren't dealing with this effectively.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: And when police do do deal with it, they focus on enforcement, a response and enforcement.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: They don't focus on prevention and safeguarding.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: And when you actually look at the figures and just some analysis as an example, from the National Centre of the Miss and Exploited Children, a couple of years ago when I was looking at some of the data, it would have changed by now, and that's just one data source of many, they were making 16,000 referrals into India every single day on suspect on suspected child abuse material.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: Every 16,000.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: So even if you quadruple the police, the police simply can't deal with it.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: And what's happening with most of that data, most countries aren't doing anything with it because it's overwhelming.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: They can't make sense of it.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's where Interpol has a real part to play.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because I then make the case of Interpol.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can actually help manage this through some form of data fusion centre where you do some analysis, and you help countries make sense of this data and enriches your data set.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, but we start looking at it and we make the case of of course you do need an effective response.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got a program that works with police to improve their response so they can collect the data better, they can analyze it, and they can go out and do something to protect children from immediate and ongoing harm and bring perpetrators to justice.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's also preventative, because impunity is a driver of child sexual exploitation and abuse.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: And if people think they can get away with it, they will go and continue to do it.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: If we can show this consequences, that also prevents future children being subject to it.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: But that is so we do that because children can't wait.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I said it's not just a strapline, but what we do focus on is the prevention.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_01: So most of what we do is get the case.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: So we have an index that comes out, a global index, that says this is the true prevalence.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we were able to show in year one 300 million children were affected online.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden, those journalists who were speaking to me at the beginning of child line said, Is this really a global pandemic?
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_01: Can you really call it that similar to COVID-19?
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: Within 12 months, people started referring to this as a global pandemic and it's a global public health emergency.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: But we still needed to make the case because health professionals and others weren't tuned into the fact that this needs to be treated as a public health issue.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because this within a university, it's at within social sciences, it's at within policing, it didn't sit within public health.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we have brought into childlight not only people from across the world, but epidemiologists and others to help us show that this is like a disease in terms of how it grows and how it spreads.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, online it mutates.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: So it started from the early days of moving into just sharing things by email into AI technologies and other things.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: Always one step ahead, it mutates, it it works its way.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: But globally, you know, you allow this to uh to continue, um, it becomes more severe.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: So the evidence shows it becomes more severe, people get more addicted to it, and it and it and it keeps on rolling, rolling, getting greater and greater and greater.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to actually prevent it.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we make the case.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: So in year one, 300 million children, because the data, bringing all that data together, public health data, criminal data, admin data, all being collected in all different ways.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: You can imagine the challenge of just bringing that together.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we're talking about secondary data, but I've got some amazing people that we brought together from professors across the world.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: We have scientific advisors who come in to help us make sure that the data that we put out is validated, is reliable, can be trusted.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a lot of external validation.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a researcher, I'm not a data analyst, um, I didn't even go to university.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I rely on others to make that case and give me the evidence case as they'll go into court and said, This is what we got.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: So year one, we looked at the world and we said 300 million children.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: We test that before we put it out.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we test it with the the community.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: And this is sorry, this is going back to 2013.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_01: No, this is going back, sorry, when we started childlight.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right, so 2000.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: 2022.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_01: 22, okay.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: So only four years ago.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: And in year one, we just say, let's so I said, let's just do a scoping.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: What do we know, what don't we know?
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's where it needs to start.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: So, like dealing with organized crime, let's go and say, what do we know, what don't we know, where are the gaps that we need to fill so we can better understand the picture and deal with it.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we did.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: And we said, right, secondary data, what's already doing collected, but nobody's really done any analysis with.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: Bring it all together, and then we tested it first with the community.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: So the people who are collecting data, doing research, and said, This is what you tell us.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is this the best that you've got?
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody said that's the best we've got.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it was the first time ever we were able to bring it together and make those strategic assessments.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: But because the data wasn't so reliable because of the nature that we have been come together, uh the advisors said to us, we can't do this by country by country level at this time, although we did have country by country level data.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: So we put it out on UNICEF regional basis to say, in these regions, this is what it tells us.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: But basically, 300 million children globally were affected, and it happens in every country, in every community, and it's growing exponentially.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: Year on year, it's getting bigger.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we put that out.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: That had made waves, got there.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: We then said, well, we want country-level data and we want to start drilling in.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we split the world into five regions.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_01: So last year it was East Asia, Pacific, as well as Western Europe.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: So we focused on those two regions, worked with partners in those regions to get that data, more granular data.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: And this year we've been doing the Americas, and we've been um sorry, this year we've been doing the um yet the Americas, East Asia, Pacific.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: Last year it was sorry, it was South Asia and uh Western Europe.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so we do it, and after five years, we'll then have the global prevalence, country by country level data.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we still have a lot of country-level data, but we're doing it in that way to make it manageable.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got that, and our data is about we've also looking at offline, so not just online, because they're intrinsically linked.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you've got to look at both.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: One is one's connected to the other often.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we've done that, and we've also seen, you know, about 150 million and children contact abuse.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: And but it's lots of gaps with the data, Nef Nelson as you can imagine.
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_01: But again, the credible data that we have, what we can say with conviction is these are the figures, and it's it's a massive scale in relation to it.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_01: What we then start doing is um taking that data to organizations that maybe not even recognize they had a problem.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_01: But we went to Atlanta and we got a lot of health professionals from across the USA, and we presented the evidence to them, the case to them, to say we think this is a public health issue that that is preventable, not inevitable, and it should be treated like other um public health issues that you actually deal with, like dementia and everything else.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: And we made the case and they agreed.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: And this was the first time for technology-facilitated CSEA because contact abuse people were beginning to see as public health, with nobody seeing technology-facilitated CSEA, what happens online.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we're saying this has lifelong consequences for those involved, you know, physical, mental, emotional, but also the impact on society is immeasurable.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it is it's actually measurable because we we're doing it.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we make the case and they say yes.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: We then do things in the Lancer Commission, which is a recognized publication, and we call it, and it gets recognised.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_01: We then go to the World Health Organization, and I'm pleased to announce late last year that it's now seen as a public health issue.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: What that means is the level of investment that comes into frontline services to prevent this happening in the first place is then massive.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: So whilst we're still working on the well, children can't wait, and this is happening today.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_01: So whilst we're making that transformational change, we've created a program called a technical advisory program, which is like people like Kelvin, who set up the unit in Kenya, and others, police officers who worked internationally, have come in and we are now advising countries about how to unlock data, how to make that data uh um triage that data so they're dealing with the most serious cases to protect children and bring perpetrators uh to justice.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: But we're then feeding that back into our research to enrich the research so that we can continue to make recommendations.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, we may want to make a recommendation on legislation in the country to um or on regulations.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we may say uh internet uh providers need to hold on to the IP address for 12 months.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: So in places like the UK, they hold on to that, so law enforcement can continue investigations.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_01: In some countries, it's just let it go.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to like advise you will be better if you can access the IP address, you can do these things.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we advise them and we strengthen it.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_01: We call it, we're not calling a programme of systems strengthening in terms of what we do.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: But in terms of that public health approach, uh, that public health message, the message is getting across, we're getting a level of investment into it.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: So within that five years, we have made massive inroads.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I was even delighted because what I wanted childlike to be is not just an NGO, a non-government organization or some form of charity that's working within the sector and responding to things.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted it to be a serious institute that people come to for reliable data.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, in terms of when we were sat up, what's really important for me is strong values in terms of we operate, we make decisions, what's in the best interest of the child.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_01: So whatever we do is always got to think, is that in the best interest of the child when we do it?
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: We act without fear or favour.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_01: We report the data regardless.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't have restrictions on any of our research.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: If a funder was to say, I'd like to see the data be researched before you put it out, then it's a no.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_01: No, we do the research, we put it out without fear or favour.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: We can change the narrative around it because we want countries to see this as a carrot rather than a stick.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we say to countries in advance of it going public, this is what we see, we can work with you.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: And a narrative can be now that you're aware of it, you've got to do something about it.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that works really well.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_01: And most countries respond really positively to that and and work with us.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_01: So so we get that um, so we we we put that data out.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: But we also it also means, and it's also uh a limiter, is that we're very restricted who we take our money from because perceptionally we also don't want to be seen in the in the hands, uh, for example, or under the influence of, say, big tech, because we will call out big tech as being responsible for a lot of what happens online.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if we're being funded by them, which a lot of the community is, prevents you from they have to be, and what I have seen across the community is they are very careful about any negative press they say to people who are funding them.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so coming from that police and background, without fear of favour, speak truth to power, you're not above the law, nothing else.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_01: That is what what drives us through that I hold very passionate and dear to is we put this out without fear of favour because people need to know they can trust the data, it's reliable, there's no political interference, and so on and so forth.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_01: We do it in a responsible way, we don't just like throw a hand grenade out there and and embarrass people.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_01: We do it in a very responsible way.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_01: We do it, but that's how we operate.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's not to say that we don't work with big tech and other organizations.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, we'll work with anybody.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_01: We'll work with the devil to protect children.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_01: But what we do is we go in with our eyes wide open around the risks associated with being too close to people because we want to.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: What that means is the narrative, uh, we're beginning to own the narrative.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because the narrative for too long has been owned, example, by big tech social media companies, by your Elon Musks, by your Metas, who will tell and terrify the public that, you know what, the reason that we can't stop this online is because of freedom of speech, you know, your uh your right to uh to free speech and privacy and everything else.
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I know from working in policing with security all my life, is they thrive off being able to have all your data.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_01: They they build their organization's company from your data.
• 1:05:55
  SPEAKER_01: If they were really concerned about privacy, you know, they wouldn't they wouldn't be so successful on.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Operating in that way.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: And often people think it's big brother, or you know, we don't want the police, the state of our data.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: But you're happy to put it into the hands of private companies who are not accountable to anybody and can use their money to get what they want.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_01: So what I say is the narrative is now is uh first of all, can technology prevent this happening online?
• 1:06:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer is yes.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_01: So then it's a question of so you choose that you can do it, but because of what you say, privacy, freedom of speech, and all that, but it's a choice.
• 1:06:31
  SPEAKER_01: So let we now got to a position, it's a choice.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: So let's not pretend it's a choice.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you've chosen that these things, freedom of speech, privacy, outweigh the protections against the children and everything else.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just start there for the moment.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_01: Then we start making the case, well, is it really privacy?
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because now we start pulling it down because you're not protecting the privacy, and you are selling a lot of this, and we've also done research to show how much money they are making from every click of child abuse, they're making money.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_01: And although they say we're not intentionally making money, but as a as a result of it, the money is going into your organization's accounting.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_01: So to live stream someone, and not just them, also the banking system, financial system.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_01: But when you give the banks the evidence, the banks with evidence will, my experience will do something about it.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_01: So when we show live streaming from someone sat in the UK or the USA who pays the equivalent of 20 or 30 US dollars for 15 minutes to direct the most deprived abuse, sexual abuse of a child in the Philippines can do anything they want within that 15 minutes for like$30.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_01: That is that only happens because of technology and the money is able to go through the financial system.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_01: So if we can start to understand, well, how does that happen?
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_01: And there are people far cleverer than me, so I'd bring it back down to the basics.
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_01: If we got email, the public are happy for us to have a spam file and for our for companies to filter out um you know all this drivel that we get, and we don't want it, so we're happy for them to put it into a spam file to block somebody.
• 1:08:10
  SPEAKER_01: Why can't they do that for child abuse material?
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so, what what what is the reason that you can't actually stop some of this?
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then the narrative all then begins to change because well, this is a choice, you can do it, you've just simply chosen not to do it, and you're not held accountable.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_01: So the other um things that come in so end-to-end encryption and privacy by design.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of the companies who are working for the tech tech companies focus purely on privacy.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_01: The public want more privacy, more privacy, more privacy.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_01: We need to get out the most secure uh things, and particularly what's happening in the in the news about cyber attacks and everything else, privacy.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's all privacy by design.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_01: What we say is can you not do safety by design as well?
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: You can do both safety by design to protect children and others.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it doesn't child-first policy, yeah.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't.
• 1:09:03
  SPEAKER_01: So safety by design doesn't come in.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it's privacy by design and then end-to-end encryption.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_01: End-to-end encryption, so they say, look, um, at the moment, that National Centre for Miss and Exploited Children receives referrals from organisations, social media companies like um Meta.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: So what you have is, as an example, to explain to the audience, is Meta aren't going out looking for this material.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: But if they come across it, because they're based in the US, US legislation says if you come across material which you think is illegal, you have to report it.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_01: So they report it to the National Centre of the Miss Exploited Children, who's funded by Congress.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_01: And when I looked at the figures a couple of years ago now, 93% of all the data that was being received there was non-US based.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that's been referred to to them, and then they send that out to other countries.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_01: But because they're being based for Congress to focus on the US, that goes out of the door to the countries.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you uh with confidence, most countries don't do anything with that data.
• 1:10:02
  SPEAKER_01: So Meta's reporting that data when they see it, but end-to-end encryption means they're not going to be able to see it and they're not going to even be able to report it.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because what they say is, well, if we can't see it, we can't report it.
• 1:10:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if we can't see it, we need less people working on trust and safety.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: So they've done a massive call on people working on trust and safety because you don't need them, because you can't see it.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_01: And what we say, and that's why we call child light also, is we shine light on what's really happening and say, just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not happening.
• 1:10:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we are shining lights back on, and unfortunately, because we've got limited resources, unlike big tech, social media companies, and nothing else, sometimes our lights flicker on and off because we're trying to keep them on, to say, just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not happening.
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And bringing it back down to what the public and others may be able to understand.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you look across from your apartment block into another apartment block and you see a child being sexually abused by an adult, just because they close the curtains doesn't mean it's stopped.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you just don't see it.
• 1:11:07
  SPEAKER_01: But you know that it's happening, but you've decided actually to do nothing about it.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't think that's acceptable.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we're shining a light on it, and that's why we want people to come to us, because our but for the data, for reliable data, and of course we need to improve both the quality, the quantity, and everything else of our data which we're working on, and we want to scale at pace in terms of what we can do.
• 1:11:30
  SPEAKER_01: But we want them to come to us because say we are not commercially motivated driven, we are driven by the safety of children.
• 1:11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And come to us and we'll give you reliable data.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so some of the research, just to finish that thread, is we start doing research, for example, on because we can't say as a moral reason to do this, a moral imperative, that doesn't get people to invest.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we show the economic.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_01: So this year we have looked at what is the economic burden on society of not dealing with this in the first place.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_01: So back in 2019, the UK Home Office, just for England Wales, estimated that it cost the UK taxpayer 10 billion pounds of actually having to deal with the consequences of child abuse each year.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_00: So we could say sorry, but just going into that, so you're talking about uh drugs, you're talking about crime, you're talking about So we're saying so.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_01: If a child um gets abused, often they go on to have other societal impact on uh might be taking drugs, maybe subject to depression, other things that happen, mental health issues, but also then the impact on society, the ability to work, healthcare support, and everything else.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, not to mention what they may or may not be passing on to their children, etc.
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you're talking about intergenerational poverty.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of uh people who go who who abuse children, a lot of people I've dealt with who go on to abuse people, but also abuse themselves.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_01: How do you connect it?
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Now I want to make it clear people who are abused don't go on to abuse.
• 1:13:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying, but those who have been abused, those who commit abuse, have often been abused themselves.
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_01: So if they say it's 10 billion, and there's other people who can come to these figures, because I say I'm not I'm not the data scientist or the research uh specialist, and they tell me these figures, and I said, Well, if we can just say that 1 billion could prevent this happening, you're saving a UK taxpayer 9 billion, yeah, all of a sudden there's a financial incentive to do something about it.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why we get it to treat it as a public health issue to make the case, get the level of investment.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_01: But once we shart some of the data, we say, you know what, this is preventable, but you can only see if you see the the picture.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_01: But despite being a coming from police, I'm also the biggest critic of policing because we we don't like to collaborate across the world.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_01: So you need Interpol.
• 1:13:48
  SPEAKER_01: If Interpol didn't exist, you'd have to create it.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_01: But Interpol is the only place.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_01: So what it does well, it brings the countries together.
• 1:13:54
  SPEAKER_01: So even if Russia is not talking, is not is not working with the US or US not working with China, Interpol is a place where all those countries can come together on a law enforcement diplomacy and and and find place.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a need for it.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_01: But police talk about being intelligence-led.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And Interpol talks.
• 1:14:13
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard people saying that from Interpol, we are intelligence-led.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I would dispute that.
• 1:14:17
  SPEAKER_01: I say, no, you're led by the intelligence you have.
• 1:14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And if you say within the UK, I would say less than 10% of child abuse cases ever get reported to the police.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_01: We had a case in in Northern Ireland where the guy had gone on to offend against 3,000 people, one uh children, one who committed suicide in in the US.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was a high-profile case, the guy, the lad is in prison now.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_01: It was around sex tortion and everything else.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_01: 3,000 victims, only four came forward.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Four children reported that any any time out of the 3,000.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we say less than 10% of cases ever get reported.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_01: There's a number of reasons for that.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so when the police see it, they're only seeing a fraction of what's happening.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so what Childlight says is look, we can help you see the whole picture.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you can see the whole picture, it doesn't mean you've got to investigate it all.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_01: It just means then you can make an informed decision about where you allocate your resources where you're going to have greatest impact.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_01: But what happens, and that's why it's sometimes frustrating, which is why I'm here today to sign, hopefully, a collaboration agreement with Interpol.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_01: We want them, we want them to see our data so it helps them make informed decisions.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're still an independent body, they can still make their own decisions, they have to, as a law enforcement um organisation.
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I said surely it is better that you can see the whole picture because then allows you to help your member countries direct resources to where they they they're going to have most effect, not just on enforcement and response, but also on prevention, how do we prevent it happening?
• 1:15:47
  SPEAKER_01: So if you can only see uh in the UK less than 10% of police agency, and bear in mind, I would say the UK is one of the most advanced countries to looking at child sexual exploitation and abuse.
• 1:15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And if we're saying that they see less than 10%, and people may argue the cost, but whatever it is, it's a small, relatively small amount that they can see.
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Then Interpol gets their data secondary from police agencies, and often after the investigations have taken place.
• 1:16:11
  SPEAKER_01: So the ICSE database, the Interpol child sexual exploitation database, is normally information shared when an investigation has taken place to say, by the way, this child has been identified and been safeguarded, or this perpetrator.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_01: So stop sudden investigations happen to go along to try and investigate a child who's already been safeguarded, for example.
• 1:16:30
  SPEAKER_01: So by the time they get that data, they're gonna have even less sight on what's happening.
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_01: So what we say is surely we can help, we want to help you, we want to help Interpol and others see the full picture.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Going back to that organized crime, if you can see it, then you can talk about where the vulnerabilities are, where the threats, but where the opportunities are to intervene and have greater impact.
• 1:16:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we want to so child light is about show shine a light on the whole totality.
• 1:16:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what's that led, what where that led us today is that we didn't anticipate at the time, is that when we shine a light on children subject to exploitation and abuse, quite a specific area that we focused on, we started uncovering other hidden populations.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And when I say other hidden populations, we see children who are also vulnerable who are being groomed and brought into organised crime.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Children who are vulnerable going into forced labour, going down mines, who are being recruited into narco-terrorist uh organizations.
• 1:17:31
  SPEAKER_01: We are seeing the same children who are vulnerable being uh groomed into these other areas, and we see it in things like in sport, see um sexual exploitation abuse in sport, which hasn't really been covered or researched.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so by shining a light, it would also shine light into other spaces, other dark areas, and they aren't being treated as a priority because they're hidden, the very nature of them.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_01: So we shouldn't be surprised the country isn't treating child sexual exploitation abuse or or or modern slavery as a priority.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because if it's hidden, they don't know about it, they're not gonna prioritize it.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because it goes back to if you don't see it, you can't measure it, you're not gonna invest in it.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got an opportunity to actually do it because we're in, you know, when we're talking UK, we have a thing called county lines.
• 1:18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Children who are who are vulnerable, who get brought in at the age of 13 to move drugs across borders, because if they get caught by the police, they're not gonna go to prison.
• 1:18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, minimal will happen to them, and they're actually a victim of the whole organised crime.
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the adults are getting away with it.
• 1:18:34
  SPEAKER_01: By the time they come to the attention of the police, these children, it's too late, often too late, or it's very, very hard to then turn it around in listen to because it's very, very difficult.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, what I would argue for is forget CSCA for the moment.
• 1:18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Just think about children.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_01: Children are the future.
• 1:18:52
  SPEAKER_01: So if we can go back and identify where the vulnerability takes place, where it starts, and we can get in two, three steps before they get exploited, groomed into these areas, sexually exploited, or into or brought into organised crime groups, then we're investing in the future, and then it's no longer just an issue of someone who's dealing with child sexual exploitation and abuse.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_01: This becomes a security imperative because we're helping prevent organised crime and future people and trying to stop it happening.
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I would also say it becomes a national security priority because whether you're dealing with um terrorists who've groomed uh children, whether it's been organised crime groups, or whether it's sexual predators who've taken advantage because the child is vulnerable, then we're saying let's look at our vulnerability.
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_01: And if we can better understand and prevent this happening across the board, then we can help so many more children.
• 1:19:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't think my job is uh is is finished yet.
• 1:20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I thought within five years, great, we have made the case for it to be treated as a public health issue, more investment, we've got the police dealing with data far better than they were.
• 1:20:09
  SPEAKER_01: So amazed on what's happened by the team within that short space of time.
• 1:20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah um I thought that would be it, but obviously there are too many opportunities now that I'm hoping that someone of your listeners will um will listen and be incentivized to also want to support us because we we can't do this on our own.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_01: It requires an an army of us to do this.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely right.
• 1:20:31
  SPEAKER_00: And how can they do that, uh Paul?
• 1:20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because you've got the the website, uh childlight.org, uh you've got the social media accounts, you're on most, if not all, platforms.
• 1:20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, you're doing this podcast, but it's a question of go along, have a look at the information, uh, read the information, share it where you can.
• 1:20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um whatever.
• 1:20:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we we want to uh replicate and scale what we do, and we require investment.
• 1:20:56
  SPEAKER_01: And when I say investment, I'm not just talking about money, but actually help us, you know, with technology, help us with AI so that we can we can do the research quicker, we can we can pull the data in together quicker.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um help us with those resources so we can mobilize, we can we can accelerate the pace at which we bring about this change.
• 1:21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Help us, like on the technical advisory program where we're going into frontline to help India, for example, with colleagues were there last week.
• 1:21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Help them deal with all these referrals so that children are better safeguarded immediately.
• 1:21:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we need people to invest because we have lots of people who are really passionate, want to help us, but passion only gets you so far.
• 1:21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it comes down to we need to replicate and scale it.
• 1:21:36
  SPEAKER_01: So if there are people on this podcast who say, Look, I don't know how I can help, but I do run a technology company or I I can support in terms of understanding the financial sector to help you understand it better so that we can find ways of better preventing it, then get in touch.
• 1:21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you very much for your time today, and then thank you to all your partners for everything that Childlight's doing and of course your team.
• 1:22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um thank you very much.
• 1:22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Ross.
• 1:22:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was a pleasure.