Sussex police and crime commissioner Katy Bourne was shocked to hear that boys as young as 11 were sharing indecent images.
At a performance and accountability meeting with senior Sussex Police officers, she was equally shocked to hear from Assistant Chief Constable Rosie Ross that 13 to 16-year-old white boys were a concern when it came to “contact” sexual offences.
The revelations came in a discussion about an inspection by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services.
The inspection looked at the effectiveness of police and law enforcement bodies’ response to “group-based” child sexual exploitation, more commonly known as “grooming gangs”.
At the meeting yesterday (Thursday 20 November), Mark Streater, the chief executive of the Office of the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner, asked whether any grooming gangs had been identified in Sussex and the “offender profile”.
ACC Ross said that, although no organised networks had been identified, the force was “not naive” to the fact that they might exist and was working to seek out organised groups.
There were, she said, five investigations under way into group-based child sexual exploitation.
She said that over the past year the force had recorded “problem profiles” with 53 “contact” offences and 53 “non-contact” offences mainly involving indecent images.
ACC Ross said: “The offender profile in relation to contact offences identified that most offenders were likely to be white males aged 13 to 16 years.
“For the non-contact group, perpetrators are most commonly white males aged 11 to 16 years old.
“It is important to say child sexual exploitation can be peer-on-peer (and) inter-familial. It’s a wide-ranging thing.
“Victims and perpetrators within the non-contact group are highly likely to know each other when creating those indecent images. It can happen at school with young people sharing those indecent images.”
The profile is in line with the national trend, she told the meeting. She said that the issue was complex because there were cases of victims being recruited as perpetrators.
For non-contact offences, ACC Ross said that 87 per cent were linked with filming and making images and most of these were sent over the social media platform Snapchat.
ACC Ross said that when group-based child exploitation was identified, it was dealt with “robustly”.
She referred to a case in which six members of the same family had been found guilty of 39 offences including rape, sexual assault, child cruelty and perverting the course of justice.
The victims were two girls, both members of their family, in West Sussex, with the defendants due to be sentenced in 2026.
Mrs Bourne said: “I feel quite shocked. I wonder how many parents would be quite appalled to learn this.
“Is there ongoing work done with schools? We’re doing a lot of work with the Breck Foundation and they’ve had 14,000 young people spoken to about the dangers of online grooming.
“I just wonder are schools in Sussex as aware of this?”
ACC Ross said that schools were very aware of the issues with indecent images of pupils – and Sussex Police was working on prevention work with safeguarding leads.
This is sexism my daughter and her entire form were sent images of a girl in their class and it was a girl that created a fake profile to get the girl to send them, stop kids using social media not just boys!