Paedophile Trevor Monk paid for the live streaming of child abuse from the Philippines and then travelled there to carry out the abuse himself. His case represents a growing problem of British men ordering abuse over the internet. It is impossible to measure the scale of the problem accurately. But Europol, the European law enforcement agency, says it's no longer an emerging trend, but an established reality". In 2013 Dutch charity Terre des Hommes decided to find out how bad the situation was. After setting up a fake profile of a Filipina child and even creating a realistic avatar, or web image of the 10-year-old, workers for the charity logged on to internet chat rooms posing as the youngster. In the space of 10 weeks, "she" was contacted by 20,000 men, 1,000 of whom offered "her" money to perform sex acts. Law enforcement is beginning to make inroads into the trade and Filipino police carry out raids and arrests on a regular basis. Operation Endeavour, which began in 2012, has seen the UK's National Crime Agency working with Australian police and the US authorities and has led to 29 international arrests. Monk's case is significant because it shows that though his crimes began in the UK, using live streaming, they then led to him travelling to carry out "contact abuse" in the Philippines with the internet facilitating an escalation to his offending.
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