The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre has recently launched the 'International Child Protection Certificate' (ICPC), to help protect children against travelling sex offenders.
Similar to the UK's CRB system, the ICPC is a police check on UK nationals who are travelling and working overseas. It is intended to help identify and screen out those who have previous convictions that make them unsuitable to be working with children.
The ICPC will allow international schools and other organisations who work directly with children abroad to be able to access the criminal conviction history of UK citizens and those who have resided in the UK for any period of time.
This will enable overseas schools and other organisations to assess an applicant's suitability to be working with children. The ICPC can also be requested for those UK nationals already in paid or voluntary employment in other countries, including the estimated 74,000+ UK teachers who currently work in international schools around the world.
A CEOP analysis of offender management cases undertaken in 2011 found that one in five were associated with roles that involved access to children. Teaching and schools-related positions were the most represented occupations or voluntary roles associated with cases of offending overseas.
Since 2006, CEOP has undertaken over 1,200 investigations into travelling UK sex offenders.
Contact Jeffrey Lewis or Siobhain Egan of Lewis Nedas for advice on how our criminal defence lawyers can help you defend against allegations of sexual offences.
