A UCC team which specialises in tracking child pornographers and perverts on the Internet helped to convict a child rapist who received six life sentences yesterday at Nottingham Crown Court.
The UCC team, under Prof Max Taylor, works closely with the Garda and with a number of UK police districts and has also had success in helping to bring dangerous child abusers to justice.
In one incident Prof Taylor's team found an image on the Internet which showed a child abuse act taking place. A television in the background was showing a trial advertisement which had been beamed to just a small number of houses in Manchester.
The footage was filmed by a relative of the child, and with the information provided by UCC, police were able to narrow down their search and charge the man.
Det Insp Terry Jones of the Greater Manchester Police (GMP), who led the investigation in the latest case, yesterday praised the UCC team's work, part of the Child Studies Unit of the Department of Applied Psychology. The unit works with COPINE (Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe).
Last January, as part of a joint operation with the Nottingham Constabulary, the GMP arrested a 39-year-old man for offences including child rape and making and distributing indecent images of children.
Before the arrest British police had become aware that 14 images on the Internet showed the serious sexual and physical abuse of a young child. A police campaign analysed the images and when the UCC team had scrutinised clothing, house interiors, fixtures and foods, the police narrowed down the site of the offences to a particular location.
Det Insp Jones said a key feature of the investigation was the sharing of information with the UCC team, which provided "specific pieces of intelligence from their extensive knowledge of Internet paedophile activity". He said two years ago they helped to track down a paedophile who carried out terrible abuse and had raped a four-year-old child.