KONSTANTINOS HRISOS FROM NEWCASTLE ADMITTED TO MULTIPLE SEXUAL OFFENSES INVOLVING A CHILD
A 63-year-old man, Konstantinos Hrisos of Fenham, Newcastle upon Tyne, has pleaded guilty to 49 charges, including sexually abusing a seven-year-old girl and possessing nearly 250,000 indecent images of children.Hrisos appeared at Newcastle Crown Court to face the charges after being arrested by National Crime Agency (NCA) officers in September of the previous year.
The NCA initiated the investigation following their discovery that Hrisos had been downloading indecent images of children (IIOC).
During a search of his home, authorities recovered electronic devices containing a total of 246,829 abuse images and videos, which included 1,040 images and videos classified as Category A—the most severe—along with an additional 23,527 prohibited images.
Among the disturbing images collected by Hrisos were 'upskirt' photographs he took in a park, capturing two girls estimated to be five and 12 years old.
During the investigation, officers uncovered that Hrisos had been abusing a seven-year-old girl for at least 12 months.
He had taken over 2,000 images and videos of the victim during this period and admitted to sexually assaulting her on nearly 30 occasions.
Hrisos was remanded into custody and is scheduled for sentencing on 6 September.
Graham Ellis, the NCA operations manager, stated, “Konstantinos Hrisos is a danger to children.
He’s gone from downloading images online, to photographing children in a park to eventually abusing a child.
Hrisos’s offending has escalated in a way that the NCA is seeing in many other cases.
The NCA knows that the scale and severity of this offending against children is worsening.” He continued, “We and UK police arrest around 450 child sex offenders a month and safeguard about 680 children a month.
UK referrals from the tech industry related to child sexual abuse material have increased significantly—rising from 43,072 in 2016 to 82,109 in 2017 and 113,948 in 2018.
Behind every image is a child whose life has been utterly devastated by their abuse, and individuals like Hrisos continue to perpetuate that suffering.” The Lucy Faithfull Foundation, a child protection charity that runs the Stop It Now!
helpline providing confidential advice for those concerned about their own or others’ behaviors towards children, emphasizes the gravity of such offenses.
