Europol announces arrests of 115 'child sex offenders'

Europol says 115 alleged child sex offenders have been arrested in raids across 18 EU nations and Canada. It says its two-year Operation Typhoon - targeting child sex offenders on the internet - has now been concluded.

The suspects had different professional backgrounds, some of them being teachers or caretakers in close contact with children. It says it identified five children - aged between four and 12 - who had been victims of sexual crimes.

Europol says its investigation was led by Austria's Criminal Intelligence Service (.BK) which had detected an internet service provider misused by child sex offender groups to distribute illegal content on the internet. Log files collected by the .BK were then sent to Europol together with offending images. In all, 221 suspects have been identified of which 115 have been arrested, Europol says.

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Child firebugs 'often become adult crims'

Children who like setting fires are more likely to go on to commit serious crimes as adults, a study has found. Up to 200 young people identified as having worrying fire-related behaviours - and who subsequently went through a special education programme for fire setters - were looked at for the study.

Carried out by the New Zealand Fire Service over 10 years, the study showed that 2 per cent of the group went on to commit arsons in the years after being a part of the programme in 1999. Just over half of the group - 55 per cent - went on to commit other crimes which included serious assaults, intimidation threats, disorder, drugs offences, burglary and the more serious crimes including sexual attacks.

Clinical psychologist and lead researcher Dr Ian Lambie said the study made it clear that many fire setters were at high risk of committing crimes in the future. "It might be that some young people also grow out of fire setting and replace it with another criminal behaviour - or it could be a combination of the two," Dr Lambie said. "We need to do more research to find out.

• "An Outcome Evaluation of New Zealand Fire Service Fire Awareness and Intervention Programme”, University of Auckland, October 2009.
• "Sparking up an Old Flame: A Process Evaluation of the Fire Awareness and Intervention Programme (FAIP) in New Zealand. University of Auckland, September 2008.
  

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Two New Publications on Online Child Grooming

The Australian Institute of Criminology has recently published two new reports relating to online child "grooming". Grooming is a term that describes the efforts of offenders to befriend and prepare children for sexual purposes at a later time. This information may be useful for analysts and investigators dealing with child exploitation.

• Online child grooming: a literature review on the misuse of social networking sites for grooming children for sexual offences.
• Responding to online child sexual grooming: an industry perspective.

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