To my great pleasure, my meeting with John Carr took place in the House of Lords. John had earlier in his career been a member of the regional government for London and had been a Parliamentary candidate. John has strong affiliations with the Labour Party but his position, and the group he works with, are apolitical and independent of government funding and government direction.
John started by talking about the international nature of Internet abuse by paedophiles. Commenting on the 2001 'Wonderland Club' he told of how the huge scale of paedophile activity was discovered quite by accident. A man in California was discovered by the Police involved in sexual abuse of a child. Looking into the case thoroughly, the Police phoned the parents of all the children with whom the man admitted to having any kind of contact at all, not even necessarily contact of a sexual kind.
One particular mother whose daughter was a friend of the man's nine-year-old daughter and had spent the weekend before staying at the man's home, queried her own daughter about the possibility of something untoward having occurred. The girl denied this but the mother's suspicions were aroused by the manner in which the girl behaved. Eventually the very upset daughter admitted that in the night she had been taken by the man and raped in front of a camera. This of course was for the world-wide audience of paedophiles who belonged to this 'Wonderland Club'
As a result of further investigation by the Californian Police, the name of an another suspected paedophile was referred to the West Sussex police, who followed up on him. When the scale of the operation was discovered, the UK National Crime Squad was called in and the 'Club' began to unravel. (New Zealanders will recall publicity last year about this horrendous and large scale abuse of children). There have been international attempts to identify those children so that assistance can be given to them; unfortunately, many will never be identified.
At about this time there was general awareness in the UK that it is necessary to have such investigations carried out by a police group with specialist knowledge of the Internet, and so the new 'High Tech Crime Unit' was set up. John stated that this unit has been given funding of 25 million pounds and a staff of 80, with 40 of the staff in the national headquarters in London. The other 40 are to be distributed among the UK's county-based police services.
It is of interest that in the UK there are over 40 different police forces acting independently of each other; there is no national police force.
John then went on to talk about the role in the UK of the many independent groups working for the welfare of children. Barnardos, for example, has the task of giving therapeutic support to teenage boy sexual offenders. John himself has written evidence for a change in law which will distinguish between a paedophile of adult years and a paedophile who himself is a teenager. The latter is seen as requiring therapeutic treatment and not necessarily a prison sentence.
John told me there were 180 members of the 'Wonderland Club' and Interpol became involved in the following up of 96 suspects. 40 national police forces were involved, including Canada's. All the police forces were sent exactly the same evidence re the offending by their own nationals. There were 70 offenders in the US, 10 in the UK, 11 in Germany and 8 in France. The only country which did not arrest as a result of the evidence provided was Canada which had 14 offenders referred on to it
This anecdote led me to mention to John that very soon after that Wonderland Case, the NZ Internal Affairs Department Censorship and Compliance Inspectors worked closely with the Canadian police to bring about the arrest and conviction of a particularly unpleasant paedophile in Canada. Steve O'Brien of NZ Internal Affairs was interviewed in the New Zealand media about his work in assisting the Canadian authorities
John then spoke of an organisation called Children's Charities Coalition for Internet Safety (CHIS). He noted that all the large charities in the UK including Barnardos, National Children's Bureau, NSPCC, The Children's Society, NCH, Child Line and the NCVCCO were all working to a national plan to do with safety for children. With the advent of the use by paedophiles of the Internet, Internet safety had became more of an issue. These major charities, which are not funded by government and therefore are a very influential political force in the country, were aware of the need for expertise in this area of Internet and paedophilia and turned to John Carr for assistance.
Further general advice John gave as to the direction the NZ Internet Safety Group could be taking is to continue to ensure we have industry on our side and that in NZ every effort be made to stay ahead of the game in technological developments. As John commented, the children and the paedophiles have the expertise in this area which in many cases law enforcement and parents do not have.
John stressed the importance of maintaining a close relationship with the Police. He noted that it is often in the best interests of the Police to have an independent group featured in the media discussing Internet safety issues rather than have the Police themselves be the first to bring up a particular issue with the media. He himself certainly finds that link with Police to be a vital one.
John also stressed the importance of a group working on Internet safety to have a technological advisor as part of the group - this is the role he himself plays in the UK. As he noted, if one of the spokespeople does not have that expertise, those who are 'anti-regulators' can "blind others with science". It is very difficult to respond in the same language if you don't have that technological background, John says.
Interesting information about the history of the Internet which John supplied
President Eisenhower issued an ultimatum to the military when the Russians put Sputnik up on 19 October 1957. John said that the ultimatum was that the top military and academic people had to prove that the USA was the superior world order in all matters technological. Out of this initiative, eventually, came the Internet as we know it today. One of the issues that preoccupied the military was to find a communication system which could still work in a post-nuclear strike, a decentralised system making use of the telephone system. John added that the work was carried out initially principally in Stanford, UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah. By 1973 the fruits of this work had spread overseas, especially to London and NORSAR in Norway.
John continued that the Internet really did not reach the wider world until the use of www in 1992/93. By 1994 a commercial web browser was up and running. It did the same thing for the Internet as 'windows' did for the computer: made it more user-friendly and intuitive.
The reason of course why there was no child-oriented security built into the Internet from the earliest times was that it was seen as a military and then academic tool. John said no one ever envisaged the use and abuse which characterised the 1990s and into the 21st Century.
The power of the child charity movements in the UK.
John gave me most interesting information on these extremely powerful and influential groups. Some of them go back to the early and mid 19th Century. The NCH has a staff of 5,000 and runs around five hundred local projects.
