SPECIAL REPORT: The ECHO was given exclusive access to the specialist unit which targets some of the most despised offenders in the country
00:01, 31 Jan 2026
DCI Chris Saidi from Merseyside Police’s Online Child Abuse Investigation Team(Image: Liverpool ECHO)
On the second floor of Merseyside Police’s command centre in Speke, a frosted glass office has its blinds drawn. The only indication of what goes on behind its permanently closed door comes from the bright red stop sign blocking the entrance – ‘indecent images of children may be on display beyond this point’.
The innocuous office provides a base for one of Merseyside Police’s most specialised units – the Online Child Abuse Investigation Team. The two dozen-strong arm of the force targets the most universally despised offenders – adults grooming children online, sharing indecent images of them and arranging to meet in person to sexually abuse them.
Offenders range from sole perpetrators using the internet’s darkest corners to view and download indecent images to online forums and groups engaged in the organised rape, abuse and grooming of children, while the victims in the cases range from newborn babies to teenagers approaching adulthood at 17.
The importance of the work the unit carries out every day to protect and prevent children falling victim to predatory paedophiles has never been more obvious. In the past two years there has been a 30% increase in cases, both on Merseyside and nationally, as the team battles to keep pace with technological advancements including the threat of AI.
Merseyside Police’s Online Child Abuse Investigation Team.(Image: Liverpool ECHO)
It has just gone midday on a brisk and overcast Monday in January and the ECHO has been given exclusive access to some of the unit’s top officers, just a matter of days after one of their most significant recent successes – the successful arrest, conviction and sentence of St Helens man Adrian Waring.
In the past 12 months alone the team has arrested 280 people, charged 170 suspects with offences and made over 250 safeguarding visits to child victims. But there is no pause for a pat on the back. At any one time the unit has between 400 and 500 open and active investigations.
“The online world is a really challenging space and it’s constantly evolving,” explained the unit’s senior officer Detective Chief Inspector Chris Saidi. “Anyone can access the internet from anywhere. We are seeing from our investigations and the safeguarding we do that we are dealing with children of primary school age right through to secondary school.
“There are more people online and there’s more [abuse images] on the internet. We’ve got a child abuse image database so a lot of our work is around capturing those images and uploading into that so they can then be tracked on the internet.
“With more and more kids having access to phones and whatnot, naturally, sadly, there’s going to be more kids uploading stuff to the internet and then backward minded people will share that and there will be a knock-on effect. It’s a really challenging space and I think we can see it’s only going to increase.”
DCI Chris Saidi from Merseyside Police’s Online Child Abuse Investigation Team(Image: Liverpool ECHO)
The bulk of the unit’s intelligence comes from the National Crime Agency’s (NCA) Child Exploitation and Online Protection unit or from direct referrals from social media companies including X, Meta, Snapchat and TikTok.
Once the unit has its first piece of intel, which often is just a solitary image, officers are tasked with tracing it back to a person who they can attribute an offence to before a team goes and makes an arrest.
A relatively simple investigation for the unit might see the arrest of a suspect and the seizure of their electronic devices providing the necessary evidence to prove they have downloaded indecent images of children. But sometimes the arrest of a suspect is just the tip of the iceberg and the investigation pulls the team into something even darker.
All too often the analysis might reveal a suspect is engaging in online discussions, swapping and buying images with other paedophiles or communicating with children and extorting them for more pictures or money. The worst case scenario for the team is an offender has already groomed, met up with and abused a child.
Merseyside Police Speke Command Centre, where the unit is based(Image: Liverpool ECHO)
Perhaps the biggest challenge aside from the technological advancements is the fact there is not a one size fits all when it comes to who is an online paedophile. While an investigation into an organised crime group might follow avenues such as territory disputes, contacts, supply chains and historical offending, the unit faces the prospect that their target might be of any demographic.
The suspect, almost exclusively a male, could be a teenager or a pensioner, a business owner or bus driver, or come from Walton or Woolton. Most concerningly they could be a dad, grandad, uncle, brother or legal guardian.
All any of them need to perpetrate a crime is internet access and a dark room. And often they make efforts to disguise their identities by posing as other people or children and using virtual private networks to mask their location.
This untangling of the criminal web exposes the officers to some of the most heinous images imaginable. Two constables, who spoke to the ECHO on condition of anonymity because of the frontline nature of their roles, both had, like any officer in the unit, a particular case which has, and will continue to have, a lasting effect on them because of the traumatising nature of what they had to witness.
“The worst I’ve had to investigate was the sexual abuse of babies, new-born babies,” said a female officer, dressed casually in jeans and a sweatshirt. “That will always be etched into my mind.”
A powerfully built man with a dark beard and shaved head added: “I had to tell the partner of a man who was abusing their two-year-old child. Her scream will stay with me forever. That was the most brutal.”
DCI Chris Saidi(left) and DI Ian Tinsley from Merseyside Police’s Online Child Abuse Investigation Team.(Image: Liverpool ECHO)
A role in the unit is considered one of the most high-risk within the police force. Officers have enhanced psychological support through the force’s occupational health team to ensure they are adequately looked after. Despite this, due to the unit being a specialism, many of the officers have been in this line of police work for a number of years.
“It’s a challenging role especially for officers who have to review the images,” said one female officer who previously worked as part of a regional crime unit. “Every person has a different way of dealing with it. Certain people can just go through the images like they’re cards but others can’t and it stays with them.”
So what draws a police officer to this line of work? “It’s the end result,” she replied. “If you put in the work you get the reward. You get them on the register, you safeguard a child…There is a motivation for you to find them and deal with them.”
The arrest and conviction of Adrian Waring was a recent success for the unit(Image: Merseyside Police)
Thirty-five-year-old Adrian Waring was sentenced last week to over 22 years in prison for the rape of a baby and a stream of other offences including downloading abuse images and bestiality. “The referral came in and he was identified as a suspect,” said the unit’s top officer. “Once he’s been arrested we’ve downloaded his phone and the material has been found on it.
“Without that, that’s a child without a voice and no one else would know about what Waring did. Without that evidence on his phone we probably would not have known about that abuse.”
Another monster ensnared by the team was Michael Lymath – a Southport man who posed as a teenage boy who liked to play online video games. In reality, he groomed children, some as young as 12, into sending him illicit images of themselves performing sex acts before he made attempts to continue his depraved plans in person, either in hotels or in the back of his van.
Lymath was sentenced to 20 years for the rape of a 12-year-old girl and a slew of other offences including the distribution of category A indecent images.
Michael Lymath pleaded guilty to 27 offences including serious child sex offences (Image: Merseyside Police)
Detective Inspector Ian Tinsley told the ECHO that once the unit has a case referral, officers will determine and prioritise depending on the risk factors. “Everything that we deal with is risk, but within that risk, there’s the high risk, right up to the very high risk,” the officer said.
“We have to look at if we know the suspect, if they are someone in a position of trust, if they have kids. That way we know how quickly we need to deploy to it, whether it be an arrest or safeguarding…It’s about us managing the risk.”
The work of the unit is multi-faceted. As well as picking apart the investigation and detaining the person behind the phone or computer screen, the most important work is safeguarding the children, using prohibitive and preventive orders to remove threats and liaising with regional crime groups to identify networks. The unit also provides educational work with children regarding online and technological risks.
While advancements in technology have been lauded by some, others see the development as posing a significant risk, particularly with the continuing advancements in AI. The ECHO’s visit to the police unit came just weeks after controversy surrounding Elon Musk’s X AI tool Grok, which was able to edit real images of people to show them in revealing clothing in sexualised deep fakes.
“It’s an emerging one for us, one of our staff had one of the first convictions for an AI developed image,” said Det Chief Insp Saidi. “We have seen for some time that an image can be edited to have a child’s face on an adult woman’s body, for example. But this is quite scary, everyone has access to it.”
Det Insp Tinsley added: “Parents put pictures of their children on social media and then they can be edited with AI. That’s where the education stuff comes in and is so important. If you’re on Facebook or social media make sure you are private and you know who can access your profile.”
A job within the unit comes with pressure, both in terms of the ever-growing workload and the magnitude of the criminality. But for Det Chief Insp Saidi and his team, the damage these crimes can cause is enough to keep going. “What people are looking at and doing is horrific.”