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April Jones case highlights internet porn issue, says Christian campaigner

A Church leader says internet search engines need to be more vigilant in the wake of the April Jones murder case.

The warning comes after Mark Bridger, who had a stash of explicit images on his computer, was jailed for life for murdering the five-year-old.

Gerald Coates is leader of the Pioneer Network of Churches and author of Sexual Healing: Identity, Sexuality, Calling.

He told Premier's Marcus Jones on the News Hour why he thinks internet search engine companies need to be more responsible:

After police found a stash of explicit pictures of children on Bridger's computer there's a warning that people who look at child pornography over the internet must be better investigated.

The former head of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre Jim Gamble said: "One of the lessons that has to be learned from this is that people who actually view, in my opinion, are likely to do. To step outside the virtual world into the real world if they get a chance."

Search engines like Google are also being urged to block access but spokespeople from both Google and Microsoft say they already remove illegal content as soon as they're made aware of it.

But there is perhaps an even greater problem, and one not widely understood – that users cannot access the entirety of the internet through search engines.

Huge swathes of data, sometimes referred to as the deep web, are not indexed by Google and Bing and are often only accessible through widely unknown methods.

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