
Should children of online sex offenders receive more support?
"John" is a convicted sex offender. "Ava" is his daughter. She was only told about her father's crimes weeks after his arrest. But the impact of those crimes could last a lifetime.
Online sex offenders receive counselling as part of their rehabilitation, as do their victims. However, there is currently no support for the families of those perpetrators - despite the devastation they have caused.
In today's Sky News Daily, our correspondent Katerina Vittozzi tells us about her in-depth interviews with both John and Ava (not their real names) and examines the system that offers more help to offenders than those they leave behind.
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.

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Daily Mail
30 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE London's mugging hotspots revealed: Interactive map shows where you're most likely to be targeted by thieves in the Sadiq Khan's lawless city
The places where you are most likely to be mugged in London can today be revealed as a crime wave continues to grip Sadiq Khan 's lawless capital city. Unsuspecting tourists and locals alike are being targeted by gangs of thieves grabbing expensive watches off people's wrists. Yobs on e-bikes have been also caught on camera violently snatching phones out of people's hands as they walk down the capital's streets. Some of the recent victims of muggings in London include Bridgerton 's Genevieve Chenneour, Loose Women 's Christine Lampard and Jenson Button's wife Brittny. Now, MailOnline can reveal that London's most exclusive postcodes make up the worst hotspots for muggings. As shown in the interactive map below, Fitzrovia West and Soho in central London has seen some of the highest rates of robberies of individuals in the past year. In one area that covers both Oxford Street and Shaftesbury Avenue, a total of 508 muggings were reported to police in the year to June 2025. Another 499 robberies of individuals were recorded in the area including Regent Street, New Bond Street and sections of Oxford Street in the same time period. The areas around the Strand, Leicester Square, St James and Mayfair also saw very high levels of violent thefts, according to the data released by the Met Police. One zone, which includes popular tourist hotspots Leicester Square and Covent Garden, saw 370 muggings between last June and this summer. Another in the area around Buckingham Palace, the Mall and Picadilly Circus saw 251 violent thefts, police have said. It comes as a number of celebrities have revealed they have fallen victim to prolific thieves and muggers causing terror across the capital. Bridgerton star Genevieve Chenneour, 27, was targeted by a prolific teenage criminal who grabbed her phone in a Joe & The Juice in Kensington in February. Zacariah Boulares, 18, was jailed for just 22 months after snuck up behind actress but she bravely fought back, dragging him to the floor with the help of her boyfriend. She said she thought she was going to die after the thug threatened to stab her. Moreover 18 months before the attack, Boulares had targeted another celebrity victim. The then 16-year-old threatened to behead Aled Jones with a 20in machete as he stole his £17,000 Rolex Daytona in Chiswick, west London. The thief was locked up for the attack but only served 14 months of his 24-month sentence before being released back onto the streets. There was also outrage earlier this year after veteran broadcaster Selina Scott, 74, revealed she was viciously attacked and robbed in broad daylight in Piccadilly. The stalwart of British TV was leaving a Waterstones shop on June 17 when she was struck on the back of her right knee, leaving her feeling as if she had been 'stabbed'. She was set upon by a gang who attempted to grab her backpack. Fighting back, she kept hold of the bag – but one of the thieves unzipped it and took her purse before running off. Ms Scott lost her bank cards, driving licence and cash in the robbery. Furthermore in June, three 'Rolex rippers' who beat up their victims in central London before grabbing expensive watches were jailed for a total of 30 years. Tedros Haile, 35, Mahad Jammeh, 24, and Christian Whittingham, 27, carried out a series of attacks on the streets of Mayfair and the West End on June 25 last year. The trio targeted Michail Rivas outside the Rolls Royce showroom in Stratton Street as they surrounded him after jumping out of a white BMW wearing face coverings. They grabbed Mr Rivas' Mido Baroncelli Moonphase Chronograph worth £1,000 and quickly made off in the getaway car. Later that night the thieves targeted Mark Jackson and Oliver Wragg in Brewer Street. Both were wearing short sleeved tops and expensive looking watches after a night out watching football. Mr Jackson felt a hard object hit him behind his head then was hit with multiple full force fist punches. Statistics published by MailOnline last year revealed that muggings in London's West End tripled in just 24 months. Figures show the number of thefts from a person in the area around Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square increased to 2,806 in 2023, compared to 796 in 2021. On Tuesday, Sir Sadiq Khan announced policing blitz on London's 20 most troubled town centres, specifically for shoplifting, robbery, knife crime and anti-social behaviour. His Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, Kaya Comer-Schwartz, said: 'The safety of our town centres is more than just policing – it's about building stronger, more connected communities where everyone feels secure. 'Across our city there will be partnership led operations to tackle shoplifting and clear, visible neighbourhood officers out on patrol, keeping our communities safe and working to build safer town centres and a safer London for everyone'. Moped and e-bike gangs have been identified as prolific culprits. It comes as MailOnline last week also revealed the worst streets for mobile phone theft in London's West End. Nearly 18 devices are being snatched on Oxford Street each day - with a total 6,539 reports of devices being stolen last year. Shaftsbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road in the theatre district were third and fourth with 1,032 and 946 respectively between January and December 2024. Completing the top ten were Wardour Street on 929, Greek Street on 623, Piccadilly on 591, Old Compton Street on 507, Strand on 494 and Leicester Square on 455. Phone theft has become an epidemic in London, hitting a record level last year – with the number of devices snatched more than tripling in four years. Some 70,137 phones were reported stolen to the Met in the capital in 2024, up by nearly 40 per cent from 52,428 in 2023. As recently as 2020, the figure was 20,000. Susan Hall AM, leader of the City Hall Conservative Group, told MailOnline: '6,539 thefts on Oxford Street alone is obscene. 'With the prospect of pedestrianisation looming, I've spoken to residents in Westminster who are horrified at how police cuts and pedestrianisation will only exacerbate this. 'For God's sake, Sadiq - get a grip on this and actually put the welfare of the public first. His inaction is rapidly making the West End more and more lawless.' Her Tory colleague Neil Garratt, who wrote the Tackling London's Theft Epidemic report earlier this year, added: 'These figures are shocking but not surprising. 'In February, my report into London's spiralling phone theft epidemic showed exactly how the Mayor can get a grip, but he refuses. 'Instead, he sits back blaming the phone companies while Londoners and visitors to our great city fear to take out their phone. This problem is solvable, so I am urging him, again, to take action now.'


Daily Mail
32 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE 'Don't come here. We'll put you in jail or send you home': That's the message from Greece's new immigration minister as his overwhelmed nation passes a hardline law. So will Keir Starmer take the slightest notice?
The Greek immigration minister does not mince his words. He may be new to the job but his message to the millions of young men waiting in North Africa to come to his country for a life in Europe is clear: 'Don't come here. We will put you in jail or send you back home.' In an exclusive interview with the Mail, Thanos Plevris said: 'The Greeks, like the rest of Europe, want to help real refugees, but we will not be taken for fools. It is the end of the fairy tale that those coming to Greece and Europe in incredible numbers are all women and children. They are mainly men aged between 18 and 30 who are economic migrants. We are not a hotel any more. 'Many are from safe countries, such as Egypt, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Now we are telling them that if you sail in illegally by boat to Greece, do not expect asylum but get ready for five years in jail or a ticket home instead.' Greece is on the frontline of Europe's out-of-control migration crisis that, as Britons know well, has reached northern France where trafficking gangs are using fleets of small boats to send tens of thousands of migrants to Dover. Greece, on the other side of the continent, has its own relentless wave of newcomers. This year, at least 10,000 migrants have reached its biggest island, Crete, from lawless Libya a few hundred miles away across the Mediterranean Sea. In the first week of this month alone, just after Mr Plevris was appointed immigration minister, a surge of 4,000 arrived illegally on the island, which is struggling to cope. The coastguard and police are holding the uninvited foreigners in emergency camps in empty warehouses where they get a chilly welcome, basic rations and sleep on concrete floors. As we witnessed, they are young men growing dangerously angry while incarcerated against their will in the stifling summer heat. 'Our big problem today is with Libya and who they are sending over,' the plain-speaking and unapologetic Mr Plevris told me as he promised to stifle the migration flow for ever. 'Libya is using big vessels carrying 200, even 300, people. Of all those who have arrived, 85 per cent are male, and the majority of them are young. They are using Greece to enter Europe illegally for a new life. 'If we just continue to sit and watch, it will never end. Three million migrants are today massing in Libya. 'Now I plan to deter them from setting off for here.' Ten days ago, the Greek parliament passed a new law to help Mr Plevris get his wish. It suspended all asylum applications from those arriving illegally from North Africa for 'at least three months' due to the 'extraordinary' migration emergency. The European Union has sided with Athens, saying the Greek crisis is 'exceptional'. Under the legislation, due to be introduced within days, most of the illegal arrivals will have two choices: a five-year prison spell or deportation to their home country, at Greece's expense. 'We will no longer tolerate an invasion from North Africa,' Mr Plevris said. Migrant camps with prison-like accommodation are being prepared on the mainland to house future arrivals. 'Our immigration ministry is not a hotel service,' Mr Plevris added in a headline-grabbing television soundbite after the law won overwhelming support in parliament. He is also reviewing the 'current situation' where migrants are placed, sometimes for years, in welcoming reception centres with 'menu-style' meals and state benefits, while it is decided if they are genuine refugees or not. Greece's revolutionary agenda is backed by the country's prime minister. A key aide said: 'This is an urgent situation. We are taking extraordinary steps that are difficult and strict. Our government can no longer accept the migration flows from North Africa. People there need to think twice before they pay a large sum of money [to traffickers] to come to this country.' It is anybody's guess if the thousands of young men who have reached Crete in the new surge realise what a bleak future lies ahead. But in the few days since the law was voted in, no boats have arrived from Libya. When the Mail visited two of Crete's emergency holding camps, we were allowed to walk inside among the migrants but not permitted to speak to them. 'Be careful,' I was warned by an armed police officer guarding 400 migrants at a camp on the outskirts of Chania, two hours from the Crete capital of Heraklion. 'These are dangerous people. They all want something from you, even just a cigarette, and they get angry if you don't hand it over.' Inside the warehouse camp, the smell of unwashed men and urine made my eyes smart. As we walked in, the migrants shouted for help, putting up their hands to show ten fingers, the number of days they have been incarcerated here. There was a tinderbox atmosphere and the conditions were unpalatable, to say the least. Some migrants were lying on mattresses, resorting to sharing because there are so few. For the unlucky ones, it was a concrete floor with a T-shirt for a pillow. 'They all sit with their own nationalities, the Egyptians together, the Palestinians together, and so on,' said one female guard at the door of the warehouse. 'They are very difficult to control. There are so few of us, just five, and so many of them. We are tired, they are tired. It is not a safe situation.' One pitiful boy, who whispers to me that he is an Egyptian and 14, is barefoot and wearing just underpants and a shredded T-shirt. In one corner, standing alone, is a tall figure with dark hair and his neck covered in the red and white scarf of Palestine. 'He will say he is Egyptian, if he is asked,' a guard told me. 'But he has come from Gaza. 'He won't have an identity document because he will have destroyed it before reaching Greece. It makes our job of finding out who these people are, if they are bad or good, more difficult.' The police guards, just three men and two women, were under stress. If they open by a crack the giant metal doors to the warehouse to get in and out, throngs of men run to the entrance to try to reach the fresh air and escape the stench for a minute or two. 'No, no, no,' shout the inmates in one crescendo of furious male voices as the doors are snapped shut. Nearer Heraklion, in the mid-Crete town of Rethymno, is a second warehouse camp. If anything, the atmosphere was more tense still. It is on rough land overlooking the sea and a beach, and had nearly 180 men inside when we visited. Inside, we saw a gruff-looking police officer using a metal baton to control the migrants. One Egyptian who argued with him, after dilly-dallying for a few minutes on a visit to the latrine block in the yard, was chased and hit on the arm by the officer. 'You can show my stick on your photographs,' the officer said to me, 'but not my face.' He added: 'These men are disappointed, angry, and increasingly volatile. They will remember me. They expected to get a free pass into Europe because the Libyan boat traffickers told them that. Now we are keeping them here. They are not getting what they wanted or hoped for. It is difficult to make them stay calm. You must be wary.' It is at the Rethymno camp that we saw migrants being deported, first to Heraklion port and then to mainland Greece, in an operation resembling the movement of prisoners. During the afternoon, they were brought out of the warehouse in six nationality groups and made to sit on the ground in the blazing sun for half an hour to wait for buses to take them to the ferry for Athens where migrant camps have already been toughened up. Some held cardboard from torn-up boxes over their heads to protect themselves from the sun as they sat in the dust. Nearly all were barefoot, some bare-chested, and each carried a blue plastic bag of possessions plus a bottle of water. We were told that the migrants and the buses would remain in a closed deck area of the ferry away from fee-paying passengers for the night crossing. It was an operation with little compassion for the migrants, but the country has clearly run out of patience. Mr Plevris, who belongs to the Right-wing faction of Greece's ruling and increasingly conservative New Democracy party, said: 'Our prime minister has warned for years of the problems with immigration. 'We want to support refugees, but we believe it is important for our society that we only take those who want to be part of Europe.' He pointed out how many of the illegal migrants want to 'transfer' their own cultures and religious beliefs to Europe. 'They want to go on living by their own rules and they want us to accept that. But we will no longer do so,' he added. Mr Plevris said the European asylum system was skewed. It encourages migrants who cheat by throwing away their passports (to avoid showing they come from safe countries) or lying about their age to boost their chances of being allowed to stay. Egyptians wanting to escape military service destroy identity papers to disguise the fact they come from a country listed as safe by the United Nations and European Union. If the words of Mr Plevris, 48, sound like common sense today, his critics have dredged up the fact that he was a political firebrand when first elected to parliament in 2007 as a member of a now defunct hard-Right anti-immigration party. In 2011, he made a much criticised speech in parliament, which is still on YouTube. He said: 'In my opinion, the immigration issue can be solved in two ways. The first way is border security, which cannot exist if there are no deaths [to the migrants]. 'The second is that we must understand the logic of disincentives. We must tell the migrants when you come here you will have no social benefits, you will not be able to drink, you will not be able to go to hospital. '[The migrant] must tell others in Pakistan that he is having a worse time in Greece than back home. Unless he sees a life of hell and not a paradise, he will come.' Controversial though his speech was, his appointment is popular with ordinary Greeks today. As I travelled in Athens to interview Mr Plevris, the taxi driver recognised the address. 'Ah. Are you going to see the new minister,' he asked. 'I would like to send him a message from people like me. Tell him on migrants that enough is enough. No more must come in. We all feel the same. We wish him good luck with his new law.'


Daily Mail
32 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Married at First Sight star 'was sexually assaulted on honeymoon by new partner'
A Married at First Sight star has claimed they were sexually assaulted by their newly matched partner during filming of the hit Chanel 4 reality show. The troubling claim, understood to have been made shortly after the couple returned from their lavish 'honeymoon' has prompted police investigations, The Sun reports. The report of the 'non-recent' incident was filed on June 14, but due to legal restrictions, the identities of those involved - including the police force handling the case - cannot be revealed at this stage. Shockingly, scenes involving the alleged victim have already been broadcast, sparking outrage and raising serious questions over the show's safeguarding policies. It is the latest explosive scandal to rock the controversial dating series, now in its ninth season, which matches up complete strangers to marry at first sight. They are then whisked off on a honeymoon and thrust into cohabitation. Participants are also filmed attending boozy dinner parties and dramatic commitment ceremonies - often a hotbed for emotional meltdowns and fiery confrontations. While Channel 4 initially denied receiving any complaints, the broadcaster has since admitted it is aware of the report made to police, prompting fresh scrutiny of the show's vetting procedures and duty of care. A source close to production told the newspaper that the situation is a 'nightmare scenario' for them as they have already been heavily criticised for throwing strangers together for viewers' entertainment. 'Now it's alleged someone was assaulted after tying the knot. It is a disastrous look for bosses,' the unnamed source added. Police confirmed they are investigating the matter, telling The Sun: 'We received a report of a non-recent sexual assault on June 14. Enquiries remain ongoing'. A spokesperson for Married at First Sight also confirmed they were aware of a report being made to police 'about an alleged sexual assault during the filming of a dinner party'. They added that the team take any issues on the show 'incredibly seriously' and follow strict welfare protocols when it comes to the cast. The spokesperson also reassured that support would be offered to anyone who reported an incident to authorities and that the show would participate with any investigations carried out as a result. The fresh scandal comes hot on the heels of another controversy involving contestant Alexander Henry, who appeared on the current season despite being accused of domestic abuse. Channel 4 rejected calls to axe him from the show, insisting his criminal background check had 'returned clear'.