EU backs new anti-child pornography plan

Date: 12/02/1998

By Rory Watson

EUROPEAN police and magistrates involved in paedophile investigations are breaking new ground by cooperating in an EU-funded project to tackle the ongoing explosion in child pornography.

The project, known by the acronym COPINE (Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe), is being developed in association with the UK's Metropolitan Police Paedophile Unit, the Association for European Law Enforcement Cooperation in Brussels and the Dublin police.

The team is examining individual case-studies and investigations, paying particular attention to the use of the Internet to disseminate paedophile material. "We are looking at broad network issues, at practical examples, at the factors involved in intelligence-gathering and sharing, and possibly at establishing a European database. We see ourselves as providing a platform for the dissemination of information," said project director Professor Max Taylor, of the University of Cork's department of applied psychology, this week.

A conference to examine the project's findings in the early summer will follow on from the group's inaugural meeting in Dublin last month - an event which brought together police, probation and prison officers and representatives from social welfare services.

"Very few countries - the UK is an exception - have specialised paedophile units. The value of the Dublin meeting was that it brought together people from a range of different backgrounds including academia and non-governmental organisations," said one participant.

"One of the difficulties is that the EU has different police forces, different laws and different procedures and it is far from easy to put one system in place. The conference, however, enabled people to compare investigations and management of complex cases, to consider how to present cases to courts and how to look for early warning signs," he added.

In addition, participants examined how prison intelligence could be used to pinpoint whether a convicted offender would reoffend. There was widespread agreement that improved coordination and information-sharing across EU frontiers were essential if paedophile crimes were to be successfully tackled.

The meeting took place just weeks after the Irish government published its Child Trafficking and Pornography bill, which will allow prison sentences of up to ten years for anyone involved in producing or distributing child pornography and of up to five years for possession of the material.

COPINE is one of the first projects to be funded under the Union's STOP programme to combat the sexual exploitation of children and trafficking in women, and is complemented by a parallel Daphne initiative to tackle violence against victims in both groups.

This year, Daphne is providing 3 million ecu to finance almost 50 local, national and Union-wide projects covering all the member states.

Among the many initiatives being supported are networks for experts dealing with missing children, a feasibility study on a register for tracking convicted child sex abusers, schemes to combat child pornography on the Internet and an audit of child protection measures in the EU.