The customers for these services are in the USA, the UK, Germany and Australia and other, usually "developed", countries.

There's an obvious question: what kind of society breeds the monsters that would pay to issue instructions to someone thousands of miles away to perform violent and degrading acts on children.

Surely, we would say, there is sufficient peer pressure and generally moral standards to protect children within our own societies.

In the Court of Criminal Appeal in England and Wales, on appeal from Crown Courts in Sheffield, Bradford, Nottingham and Sheffield, the case of R v Ahmed and others has just concluded.

It is a catalogue of abuse of the most vicious and vile kinds.

It is so horrible that the court has placed a warning on it. The warning is well deserved.

The appeals were heard together but there is no direct connection between the cases save some similar facts.

The victims ranged from toddlers to teenagers; in one case being persistently raped over a period of years. The sexual abuse, far too disgusting to be described here, is the stuff of hard porn fantasy. Except for the children involved, it was no fantasy.

The conduct was remarkably similar to that which has, for decades, been performed by sex tourists and is now the bread and butter of the child sex abuse material that is streamed, recorded and traded.

Unlike those sex tourists and on-line perverts, the perpetrators in this case were mostly in their mid-teens when their abusive conduct began.

In this case, there was no financial element.

In many cases there is.

This subject is not new to me but the descriptions of the abuse, even toned down for the judgment, are sickening.

If you want to know where the on-line sex abuse industry comes from, this is as good a place as any to start looking, with the reminder that these offenders went to school, hung out with mates and lived generally normal lives, until at last their conduct was discovered.

They live in streets like yours. They babysit kids like yours.

They are not common; they are not everywhere, but they are at least part of the genesis of a global system of extreme child abuse.

What kind of society breeds them?

Ours.

Full judgment: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/R-v-Ahmed-Nazir-and…