Issue 288  8th April 2023

Evil grooming gangs who target children and young women will be stamped out under new plans unveiled by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak today (Monday 3 April). A new Grooming Gangs Taskforce will see specialist officers parachuted in to assist police forces with live child sexual exploitation and grooming investigations to bring more of these despicable criminals to justice.

Led by the police and supported by the National Crime Agency, the taskforce will be made up of officers with extensive experience of undertaking grooming gang investigations. They will provide crucial support to forces across the country to root out grooming gangs and put more perpetrators behind bars...

Home Secretary Suella Braverman has today (Sunday 2 April) committed to a mandatory reporting duty, subject to consultation, for those working or volunteering with children to report child sexual abuse, after the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) heard heart-breaking testimony from thousands of victims let down by professionals turning a blind eye to their suffering. Mandatory reporting was one of the key recommendations made by the IICSA report to crack down on child sexual abuse and address the systemic under-reporting of this crime...

The government is also speeding up the process for members of the public to find out if someone they know has committed child abuse in the past in order to better protect vulnerable people from predators close by. Known as Sarah’s Law in memory of 8-year-old Sarah Payne, who was murdered by a previously convicted sex offender in 2000, the updated guidance for the Child Sex Offender’s Disclosure Scheme will make it easier for the public to raise a concern online and reduce the timeframes for police to respond to enquiries, which will help the public get the information they need sooner and protect children from harm...

Inmates at Lewes Prison in East Sussex face "squalid conditions and violence", according to an inspection report. The Chief Inspector of Prisons said there had been "a worrying lack of overall progress" since the last full inspection in May 2022. Toilets were found to be "filthy", and rates of self-harm had increased, with some prisoners only out of their cells for one hour a day. The Prison Service said it was "working urgently" to improve the situation.

Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor said: "Time out of cell was among the worst we have seen outside pandemic restrictions, and we were left concerned for prisoners' well-being." The jail receives prisoners from courts in Sussex, Kent and Surrey. The latest visit took place in January and found half the inmates were still not allocated to either education or employment, with some spending up to 23 hours a day in their cells...

An international operation involving the National Crime Agency has taken down one of the biggest online marketplaces selling stolen credentials to criminals worldwide. The activity, which involved 17 countries and was led by the FBI and Dutch National Police, saw Genesis Market taken offline yesterday, 4 April. Genesis Market was a go-to service for criminals seeking to defraud victims, having hosted approximately 80 million credentials and digital fingerprints stolen from over two million people.

As part of the investigation the NCA, working with City of London Police and policing partners across the UK, identified hundreds of UK-based users of the platform. This resulted in 31 warrants being executed yesterday and this morning in coordinated raids by the NCA, Regional Cyber Crime Units and police forces. 24 people were arrested in the UK, including two men, aged 34 and 36, who were detained by the NCA in Grimsby on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act and fraud offences...