40 children victims of online sex exploitation

Irish kids identified after global police probe into paedos

- DANNY DE VAAL

FORTY Irish children have been identified as victims of online child sexual exploitation this year, gardai revealed yesterday.

Supt Ian Lackey of the Garda National Protective Service Bureau said they were mostly female and aged under the 16 but some were “very young”.

The victims were identified by a portal managed by Interpol called the International Child Sexual Exploitation image and video database.

It holds more than 4.3 million images and videos and has helped identify 30,000 victims and more than 13,000 offenders with 68 countries connected to the database. On average seven victims are uncovered every day.

The images are understood to be predominantly “self-generated” and shared from “peer to peer”.