Channel 4 to track paedophile-hunting detectives in disturbing new Undercover Police documentary

CHANNEL 4 will air a brand new documentary about the harrowing issue of online child grooming next month.

The new three-part series, named Undercover Police: Hunting Paedophiles, will show the great lengths that detectives go to, to try and get these criminals behind bars.

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It comes after The National Crime Agency (NCA) expressed their worry that predators are using the current pandemic to their advantage.

Lockdown has meant that there has been an increase in young people using the internet for both school work and play time, which results in more kids being tricked into talking to online groomers.

The documentary, which has been filmed over the past two years, will see coppers pretend to be adults and children with an aim of trying to catch them out.

Speaking out about the upcoming documentary, Channel 4 documentaries senior commissioning editor Alisa Pomeroy, said: "This powerful series is both timely and vitally important.

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"As a direct result of Covid, millions of children are now stuck at home, bored, hidden away in their bedrooms and chatting online.

"Each potentially laying themselves open to the sinister practice of online grooming by an increasing number of would-be sexual abusers."

Four years ago a new undercover policing strategy was introduced across England and Wales to try and tackle the distressing issue.

And those coppers behind the idea will feature on the upcoming documentary and viewers will see first hand how it has had an impact on catching groomers.

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The documentary's executive producer Joe Mather opened up about how difficult a task it must be for the officers to do.

He said: "This is a hard-hitting trio of documentaries filmed with great care and sensitivity over two years. What the child sexual abuse officers are witness to on a daily basis is truly horrific.

"Yet these detectives, often with children of their own, have to engage with the offenders in order to find and arrest them, knowing that for every one they arrest there are countless more victims still at risk."

He continued: "It's been extraordinary to have been granted access to such a complex area of policing and to witness the work of undercover detectives as they go about searching for paedophiles operating online."

Undercover Police: Hunting Paedophiles will air next month on Channel 4.