Woman accused of child sex abuse

BBC News reports that a woman has been charged with sexually abusing a child as well as distributing an indecent image. The case is linked to investigations into a Plymouth nursery, where images of children are alleged to taken.

Cases of paedophiles being caught in possession of child abuse images are now very frequent in the news. It appears that they are being caught very easily simply by accessing child abuse websites, from which they are then traced. Their homes are then raided and the offending images stored on their computers are then used to prosecute them.

There has been legislation in place to deal with this issue long before the advent of the internet. Section 1 of the Protection of Children Act 1978 deals with possession of child pornography. The later Sexual Offences Act 2003 deals with the facilitation or arrangement of child pornography.

See BBC News 13 October 2009 Woman accussed of child sex abuse