On 25 – 26 May 2021 the Council of Europe regional project End Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse @ Europe (EndOCSEA@Europe) and project on Combating violence against children in the Republic of Moldova held a training on “Online child sexual abuse and exploitation (OCSEA)” for police, judges and prosecutors. It was based on the pilot training module on combatting online child sexual exploitation and abuse for law enforcement and the judiciary developed by the EndOCSEA@Europe project.

The course covered the topics of legislation, the investigative powers and international cooperation as well as the collection and handling of electronic evidence when dealing with this type of criminal activity and the protection of the child victim in criminal proceedings.

The training aimed, to strengthen capacities of legal professionals on preventing and combating OCSEA at national level, was attended by 160 judges, prosecutors and police officers, representatives of the National Institute of Justice and relevant NGO.

In her welcoming remarks Giulia Re, the Deputy Head of the Council of Europe Office in Chisinau underlined: ”Given the large volume of data and the number of online websites, existing techniques, and procedures for investigating the online child sexual exploitation and abuse sometimes prove to be insufficient to identify perpetrators. Therefore, the continuous improvement of the knowledge in this field of all professionals involved in the investigation process of online child sexual abuse is very important”.