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‘Taking just one image down is a victory’: The woman on a mission to rid the internet of child sex abuse

Internet Watch Foundation CEO Susie Hargreaves tells Zlata Rodionova about how the skills she learnt in the arts landed her a job at No 10 working on the Jimmy Savile revelations

Saturday 19 October 2019 18:10 BST
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Hargreaves, a mother of two, wants to put the issue of children’s vulnerability at the forefront of people’s minds
Hargreaves, a mother of two, wants to put the issue of children’s vulnerability at the forefront of people’s minds

The crime of online child sexual exploitation is one that most people find difficult to even talk about – but for Susie Hargreaves OBE, it’s part of her daily job.

As the chief executive of the not-for-profit Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), she works with police and governments around the world as well as industry leaders to make the internet safer by removing images of child sexual abuse.

What few of us appreciate is the sheer size and scale of the problem. According to the police, there are 100,000 people sitting in the UK right now demanding images of the abuse of children.

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