A police chief has warned that more British men aged between 18 and 26 are looking at child abuse images online after becoming "desensitised" to legal pornography.

Norfolk Police Chief Constable Simon Bailey, the national police lead for child protection, said younger men are emerging as a "new group" of online paedophiles.

Speaking to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), Mr Bailey said: "What we are seeing is a new group of young men aged between 18 and 26 who have been brought up on a staple diet of going to visit Pornhub and sites like that," he said.

"They get to the point where there's no pornographic material that is stimulating them so then they start to explore what child abuse imagery might look like.

"They start getting their kicks from that."


The UK is the third biggest consumer of online child sexual abuse content, according to Mr Bailey.

He said Britain's response is "the best in the world bar none" but was still not enough to tackle the issue.

The number of referrals and the level of depravity "just keep growing", he said, despite forces each month arresting around 500 offenders and safeguarding 700 children.

He also fears the problem could get worse due to advances in technology around the world.

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"You look at the opportunities that will be afforded by people who are living in poverty to then exploit children to generate income," he said.

"We have got to start being very honest about this, we have got to start debating this more in public."

"We've got to start coming to terms with the fact that there are some appalling things taking place online that unfortunately the internet is probably the root of most of the evils.

"We have to start looking at that and we have to start genuinely asking the question, how much more are we going to tolerate?"

It follows a warning from investigators that children are at extra risk from online abuse during the coronavirus lockdown.

The National Crime Agency says there are currently at least 300,000 sex abusers posing a threat, some of whom are discussing how to exploit the school shutdown.