Nearly 3,000 indecent images of children in Wales recorded in the past two years

• Three of the four Welsh police forces saw a rise in the number of recorded offences in the past year
• Offences up almost a quarter since last year (2016/17) to 22,724 recorded offences across the UK in 2017/18
• NSPCC’s Wild West Web campaign calls for tough regulator to hold social networks to account

WELSH police forces have recorded almost four offences relating to child abuse images per day in the past two years, NSPCC Cymru has revealed.

A total of 2,895 crimes concerning indecent images of children have been logged by police in Wales since 1 April 2016, according to new figures obtained by Freedom of Information requests – 1,437 in 2016/17 and 1,458 in 2017/18.

Three polices forces – South Wales, North Wales and Gwent – all saw a rise in the number of offences in the past year.

The largest increase was recorded by North Wales Police – up 30 percent from 287 in 2016/2017 to 373 in 2017/2018.

The largest number of offences recorded in Wales was by South Wales Police, with 528 and 543 crimes in 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 respectively.

Gwent Police also recorded an increase in offences from 259 in 2016/2017 to 267 in 2017/2018.

Dyfed-Powys Police was the only Welsh force to log a drop in the number of offences recorded – down from 363 in 2016/2017 to 275 in 2017/2018.

In Wales, across the four forces, the most common offence related to taking, making or distributing indecent images – accounting for nearly two-thirds of all activity.

The number of child abuse images offences recorded by police in the UK rose by almost a quarter in a year to 22,724, meaning a crime relating to indecent images was committed every 23 minutes in 2017/2018.

The charity is warning that offenders are using social networks to target children for abuse online, grooming and manipulating them into sending naked images. Without adequate support the impact of this abuse can last a lifetime.

A single offence recorded by police can involve hundreds of indecent images of children.

The NSPCC’s #WildWestWeb campaign is calling on the UK Government to prevent abuse from happening in the first place by introducing an independent regulator to hold social networks to account and tackle grooming to cut off the supply of these images at source.

Earlier in the year, the NSPCC revealed there were 274 offences recorded in Wales within the first year of the introduction of the offence of sexual communication with a child.

And last month an NSPCC survey of 40,000 young people revealed an average of one in 50 school children had sent a nude or semi-nude image to an adult^[1].

In February, Matthew Falder was jailed at Birmingham Crown Court for 32 years after blackmailing young people into sending him humiliating pictures of themselves which he shared on abuse forums.