The Darkest Web: Trailer

World of Secrets

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary

4.7 • 765 Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2026

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Somewhere in America, a twelve year old girl is being abused in her own home. Her abuser is sharing photographs of her with a vast community of child abusers on the ‘dark web’ — an encrypted corner of the internet where users are untraceable. But, hidden amongst the paedophiles, are two men whose job it is to try and find her: US Special Agents Greg Squire and Pete Manning. For more than seven years, BBC Eye journalist Sam Piranty was granted rare access to follow their work, observing the extraordinary lengths they will go to hunt down offenders and rescue children. Every detail matters, and every decision has consequences. They will not look away. The race is on.

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:09.0	Two US special agents are trying to enter a secret world.
0:14.2	Can you imagine trying to infiltrate like a gang or a mob where the only way you were admitted entrances if you were to abuse a child,
0:24.0	how do you do that? How do you get in there?
0:27.8	Into a shadow network built by paedophiles.
0:31.0	This was life for them. Like this was their escape. This was their, this is where they wanted to be.
0:39.3	How do you find someone who is determined to remain hidden?
0:43.3	The traffic on the dark web is hidden, is anonymized, and encrypted so that the person's identity is clouded from everybody else.
0:55.0	He's a psychopath, you know, and extremely smart.
1:03.0	He spoke seven languages, very, very tech-savvy, very manipulative, very charismatic. Just people trusted him.
1:13.2	In order to catch them, they will have to pretend to be one of them.
1:21.8	I'm Samparanti. I've been granted special access to one of the most sensitive areas of law enforcement.
1:28.3	There's this child out there, you know, somewhere in the world,
1:32.1	and that you're able to take that one image and then narrow it down
1:35.9	to be able to find one person in the entire world.
1:39.2	It's like, it's quite the rush.
1:42.1	For seven years, I've followed special agents, Pete Manning and Greg Squire, as they track
1:48.0	down abusers and protect children.
1:51.0	Outer doors open. Stand by.
1:55.0	They will see things that most of us never will.
1:58.0	Move in now.
2:03.6	Upstairs was one of the strangest things I've ever seen.
	...

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