The Darkest Web: 3. The hidden child

World of Secrets

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.7 • 765 Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2026

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

US Special Agents Greg and Pete are desperate. Somewhere in America a twelve year old girl, who they have called Lucy, is being sexually abused. Her abuser has been sharing images of his abuse for six years on the dark web. They have to find her - and save her.

They were convinced that Facebook would be able to help them using its facial recognition technology, but the tech giant is unable to help. So they go back to the start, examining every single thing they can see in the room she is being abused in: the sofa, the bed and then finally they wonder what they might discover if they look at the room itself, specifically the exposed brick wall. Is there any way someone could identify these bricks? And could that person help them to find Lucy?

Season 11 of World of Secrets, The Darkest Web, is a BBC Eye investigation for the BBC World Service.

This podcast includes some upsetting scenes, discussions of child sexual abuse, and there’s some strong language.

For further information on the issues raised in the programme, contact support organisations in your own country. For a list of organisations in the UK that can provide support go to bbc.co.uk/actionline.

Reporter and Presenter: Sam Piranty Writer and Producer: Annabel Deas Script advice: Matt Willis Sound design: Neil Churchill Composer: Rob Lewis Executive Producer: Rebecca Henschke Commissioning Senior Producer: Sarah Green Commissioning Editor: Jon Manel

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts.
0:05.6	Hello, I've just nipped in before your BBC podcast starts to tell you all about
0:09.4	You're Dead to Me. We're the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Also from the BBC
0:13.9	and presented by me, Greg Jenner. I should have told you that at the beginning. Sorry.
0:17.9	Anyway, like many other BBC podcasts, such as Desert Island Discs, Evil Genius, or In Our Time, your dead to me is available first on BBC Sounds,
0:26.3	a whole month earlier than anywhere else, in fact. So if you can't wait another day to hear
0:31.2	the very latest in history and loads of other good stuff, then listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:36.5	Episodes of World of Secrets are released weekly, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
0:42.4	But if you can't wait, you can listen to the latest episode now, a week early, first on BBC Sounds.
0:50.0	Hi, it's Sam. Just a warning before we start, this episode contains references to child sexual abuse and some strong language.
1:01.3	It's 2015. For almost a year, special agents Greg Squire and Pete Manning have been trying everything to find a young girl being sexually abused,
1:13.0	somewhere in America.
1:15.5	They had named her Lucy.
1:18.9	Since that first call from Denmark, from a colleague who had found Lucy's photos on the hard drive of a notorious paedophile,
1:31.3	Pete and Greg have thought of little else.
1:36.3	First, they tried tech, examining the metadata of the images. So for Pete, looking at the XF data, he was just curious if we could find information about what camera was used.
1:43.3	You know, then it wasn't as common to find, you know, GPS data,
1:48.0	but today if you take a photo with your phone or a decent camera,
1:52.0	you can literally get GPS location sometimes.
1:55.0	So given at that point we had found like a couple,
1:59.0	probably up to almost 100 images,
2:04.4	we thought we had a shot at maybe getting some of those details and then comparing those details.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.