Britain is facing a growing threat from “sadistic” so-called “Com” networks that facilitate peer-on-peer abuse by predominantly teenage boys involving child sexual abuse.
Chiefs from the National Crime Agency have issued a warning about the violent online networks amid growing overlap between online radicalisation and serious violence.
The agency issued its warning as part of its annual National Strategic Assessment, adding that known reports of these “Com” networks have increased six-fold in Britain since 2022.
Graeme Biggar, the NCA’s Director General, said that while the agency has long tackled child sexual abuse and exploitation for gratification, it was now seeing offenders “whose motives are for sextortion and coercive control.”
Britain is facing a growing threat from “sadistic” so-called “Com” networks that facilitate peer-on-peer abuse by predominantly teenage boys involving child sexual abuse
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He added: “We have seen a number of mass-victim offenders before, but the level of offending and speed to extremism is new and shocking.”
The agency’s Director General (Threats) James Baggage said that “Com” groups were filled with “rhetoric based on misogyny.”
He added: “These young men are a product of their online environment.
“The main driver is status and notoriety, generally achieved by causing the most harm.
“Young girls are groomed into effectively being under their control.”
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In one shocking example of the extent to which victims are controlled, Babbage referred to a child live-streaming a meeting with a child protection officer to prove she was not compliant with the state.
Babbage said: “I do have a message for offenders: the internet has a long memory and so do we. The risk to them is greater the longer they continue operating.”
Director General (Operations) Rob Jones told GB News that the groups had a “range of overlapping ideologies,” but that the “competitive edge” introduced in them, where offenders are egging each other on, is generating an especially potent threat.
The crime bosses said that the worrying phenomenon was still at a “relatively-limited scale” but warned that people quickly “get sucked in, desensitised and radicalised.”
Chiefs from the National Crime Agency have issued a warning about the violent online networks amid growing overlap between online radicalisation and serious violence
GETTYCom networks are a “priority threat” for Britain’s policing services dealing with “violence-fixated individuals.”
The senior NCA officers also stressed that they were operating in a “complex environment” with “peer-on-peer offending,” which is “blurring who is a victim and who is an offender.”
NCA analysts estimate that thousands of users – offenders and victims – are based in Britain and other western countries.
They warn that they have exchanged millions of messages online relating to sexual and physical abuse.
The agency warned that they had identified a number of cases in which girls as young as 11 have been coerced and groomed into causing harm to themselves and others, including their pets and siblings.
The NCA bosses were reticent to give a precise reference to the scale of the crisis, but added that they had many several arrests in the past 6 to 9 months alongside two successful prosecutions of teenage boys linked to these online harms groups.
