Tucked away in a leafy Cambridgeshire village lies an organisation at the frontline in the fight against child sexual abuse online. 

For more than 28 years, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has led the charge against the spread of child sexual abuse imagery. 

Since the early days of the internet, the child protection body has built and developed cutting edge technology to find, remove, disrupt and prevent any online record of abuse. 

Based at Vision Park in Histon, Cambridge, the IWF, its team of analysts and a dedicated hotline, is working towards making the internet a safer place for children across the world. 

With the stated aim of "minimising the availability of online sexual abuse content, specifically child sexual abuse images and videos hosted anywhere in the world", demand for the IWF has grown significantly.

In July, an investigation published by The Hunts Post revealed hundreds of adults and children were falling foul of sextortion scams in Cambridgeshire, with some victims as young as 10. 

A form of blackmail involving threats that intimate pictures will be shared, more than 2,000 incidents of sextortion were reported in the county between 2019-24.

According to figures obtained from Cambridgeshire Police, the vast majority of victims were aged between 19-24, while almost a quarter were aged between just 15-18-years-old. 

It comes as new research published by the IWF found reports involving sexual extortion are on the rise as criminals become more 'adept' at targeting younger children. 

Tamsin McNally, who manages the IWF's dedicated hotline, told The Hunts Post that protecting children from online abuse is a "tough job". 

She said: "Our analysts are among the best in the world, but the children in these images are real. Their abuse and suffering is very much real, which is why it takes the right person for the job. 

"We see some appalling content almost daily and it's difficult. When you're looking at some of these awful crimes, it resonates with people a lot more because child sexual abuse is one of the cruellest crimes out there.

"My analysts and I have seen things we couldn't imagine. But if you have the emotional resilience then it can be incredibly rewarding and definitely outweighs the horrors of what you're seeing everyday."

Tamsin, who has worked with the IWF for more than 10 years, said the charity has developed a "comprehensive" training program for new analysts to reduce the toll of viewing online abuse. 

One analyst who has benefitted from such training is *Mabel who joined the charity three and a half years ago in the hope of protecting her grandchildren from what she described as the "rabbit warren" of harmful online content. 

She said: "My primary purpose is to remove that harmful content, but it's not just a case of clicking buttons and those images going away. 

"I have to work with various content providers to determine where the content is hosted, so I spend quite some time digging around, checking IP addresses and sending a 'takedown' notice. 

"You have to have a level of care and understanding in this role but it's important to be able to shut off from the content and create mental processes to lock the harmful images from our mind when we get home." 

While Mabel's work primarily focuses on reports received by the public using the IWF's dedicated Report Remove helpline, she will proactively search for content that poses a risk to children. 

Report Remove is a world-first service run by the IWF and Childline which gives children the power to identify and report images of their own sexual abuse. 

If images are deemed criminal, the IWF can remove them from the internet, or pre-emptively block them before scammers or other criminals can share them. 

She added: "Through Report Remove, we're seeing that an increasing percentage of reports that young people make are based on sextortion. 

"Scams are getting more and more believable and you can see straight away why young people are being coerced. 

"I think of my granddaughter and fear the number of young people falling victim to these horrible individuals, especially because the internet plays such a large role in our lives." 

Tamsin added that while conversations around online sexual abuse can be a "difficult topic", wider discussions must be had to better safeguard children.  

She said: "Unfortunately, we're seeing online sexual abuse of younger children multiple times a day. We need to be able to talk about that so that parents can talk to their children about some of the dangers posed by the internet. 

"We've spoken to children who have fallen victim and their parents. There is often a sense of shame that they have been duped, but it's really important for them to know that they are alone."

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