063 Michael Hames. Police pioneer against child abuse

Thoughts On The Social World

My guest is Michael Hames who I’ve known for 20 years and whom I worked with on several initiatives and investigations starting when he was at Scotland Yard.

He was born in Colchester, Essex and after education at the Colchester Royal Grammar School, joined the Metropolitan Police in 1962. He served for 32 years and held a variety of management positions at senior rank from 1970. During much of this time, he specialised in the detection of sex offenders.

For the last 5 years of his service, he was the Detective Superintendent in charge of the Obscene Publications Branch at New Scotland Yard. During his time there, he re-focussed the work to encompass the proactive detection of paedophile offenders and it has subsequently been renamed the Paedophilia Unit of the Organised Crime Group. He developed and refined, the use of the first National Index of convicted and suspected paedophiles until the formation of the National Criminal Intelligence Service in 1993, when the Index was transferred to the Home Office Unit.

He supervised the operational unit which achieved outstanding success and world wide acknowledgment of its pioneering work to combat paedophiles.

He was the U.K. Interpol representative on the Standing Working Group on Offences Against Children. He chaired the sub-committee on law Enforcement methods and was the leading police advocate of legislation to ban possession of child pornography throughout the member States, as well as extra-territorial legislation to deal with child abusers who travel and commit offences outside their jurisdiction. He has regular contact with non governmental agencies such as E.C.P.A.T. (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of children for sexual purposes), The National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, in the U.S., as well as law enforcement agencies throughout the world.

He was also a member of the Sexual Offences Steering Committee at Scotland Yard. He has carried out research into Organised and Ritual Abuse of Children and is an acknowledged authority on the subject of Child Sexual Abuse. He has lectured widely at home and abroad and published articles in the press and professional journals. He frequently appears on Television and Radio.

He is now an independent consultant, advising and training at the request of Local Authorities, Charities and Private Companies on a variety of subjects including Child Protection, Staffing issues, Strategic Management and Selection of Staff. His speciality remains the combating of Child Abuse in Organisations.

He holds a post graduate Diploma in Management Studies. He holds the British Psychological Society’s Level ‘B’ Certificate in psychometric testing.

His autobiography, ‘The Dirty Squad’ was published by Little Brown in April 2000.

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