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<strong>Child</strong> PornograPhy First report oF the Dutch NatioNal rapporteur
traced in total in those 893 criminal investigations. The number of victims was not stated in the most
recent monitor for 2010. It has emerged that the victims of child pornography who had been identified
were, in approximately half of the cases, chance findings which were discovered on the basis of a report
of sexual abuse. The victim stated in that case that recordings had been made of the abuse, or that the
suspect appeared in the images. A small number of identifications were the result of investigation work
carried out on the Internet in the meantime. 351 Many victims were identified further to the Amsterdam
sexual abuse case, but this case was of exceptional scale and unprecedented in nature, so it cannot be
representative of the number of victims identified via the Internet. We may therefore have cause to question
the efficacy of the detection of victims via the Internet.
The aforementioned complications are (partly) acknowledged by the police and the Public Prosecution
Service, and it is partly for that reason that the Minister of Security and Justice has announced a new
structure in relation to the strategy to tackle child pornography. The outlines of that new structure are
described below and the new structure should resolve the aforementioned complications.
3.4.4 The new structure
In the spring of 2011, the Minister of Security and Justice sent a letter to the House in which the new
structure to tackle child pornography was presented. 352 In the short term, a national child pornography
steering team made up of representatives from the Public Prosecution Service and the police will be
created, which will weigh up and prioritise the centrally-prepared investigations and then assign them
to the units that carry out the investigations. The investigations will not be assessed further at regional
level. The focus, as well as the monitoring activities, will be maintained by the national steering team.
A jointly-run (police and Public Prosecution Service) child pornography and child sex tourism expertise
hub will also be created, which will focus on building and strengthening networks of experts within
the police and Public Prosecution Service. A national team to tackle child pornography will be created;
its tasks will include information coordination, intelligence and detection duties (including making
contributions in international cases). The national steering team assigns cases to the regional units.
The focus is firmly placed upon perpetrators in the Netherlands and the detection of victims of abuse.
This new structure was described in greater detail in the report Kinderporno Aangepakt [<strong>Child</strong> <strong>Pornography</strong>
Tackled] of the Programme of Improvements in Tackling <strong>Child</strong> <strong>Pornography</strong> in early June 2010. This
report contains a proposal for the creation of the organisation to tackle the issue at a national level, and
forms part of the documentation that was provided to the Lower House by the Minister of Security and
Justice. The new strategy to tackle child pornography consists of two primary lines of action:
– One geared towards tackling actual abuse; specifically a task for the regional police force.
– One geared towards tackling the recording of abuse: the child abuse material; specifically at national
level.
A national unit will focus upon tackling child pornography using tactical and technical expertise. That
particular unit will take the form of a centrally-managed organisation consisting of a single national unit
and ten decentralised units. An independent division will concentrate exclusively upon the management
351 <strong>National</strong> <strong>Child</strong> <strong>Pornography</strong> Expertise Centre, Public Prosecution Service and the Police, 2010 (not
publicly available).
352 Parliamentary Papers II 2010/11. 32 500 VI, no.102.