A four-year-old German girl filmed being sexually abused on the dark web has been found and rescued by German police

Earlier this week, German police took the unusual move of releasing pictures of a young girl they’d seen suffering ‘serious sexual abuse’ on the dark web between October 2016 and July 2017.

And it seems their risky tactic has paid off, as the girl and her abuser have now been found.

The problem of videos of child abuse on the internet - especially the dark web - seems to be almost unmanageable. However, police in Germany seem to be trying everything they can to crack down on it, and took the unusual move of releasing images of a young girl seen being sexually abused in videos on the dark web.

The images - which were screengrabs from a video - were released by Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), who have joined the Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT) and the Prosecutors Office of Frankfurt am Main, and quickly went viral, being shared all over Europe.

And we’re delighted to report that this move paid off

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On the BKA website, the authorities explained why they took such an unusual move, saying: "The extensive investigation carried out so far did not lead to the identification of the extremely cautious acting suspect.

"The Generalate Public Prosecutor's office in Frankfurt am Main and the BKA assume that the victim is still exposed to the access of the unidentified suspect, so that a continued sexual abuse of the child can not be ruled out.

"Since there are no further investigative possibilities, the District Court of Giessen ordered a public inquiry with pictures of the victim."

Updating the public on the case, Chief prosecutor Georg Ungefuk from the Central Office for Combating Cyber Crime told German newspaper Bild: “"The suspect was arrested in the evening hours by the state police in an apartment. The BKA has coordinated the deployment. He is a German citizen. The man is being questioned at the moment. "

He went on: "The girl is also German and four years old. She was examined by a police psychologist."

Meanwhile a BKA spokesman told the paper: "We are grateful that our public prosecution has led to success so quickly.Of course further investigations are now going on. "

Although some people are now asking why police don’t routinely release pictures of victims of child abuse, Chief prosecutor Georg Ungefuk explained: "It is very rare that we go public with pictures of the victims,

"This really only happens when all further investigations are exhausted and we see no other way to identify the perpetrator."

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