Police Smash 'Biggest Ever' Paedo Network

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Police Smash 'Biggest Ever' Paedo Network


Martin Brunt, crime correspondent
British police have helped smash what they believe is the biggest-ever online paedophile network.

Man on computer

More than 50,000 network members have been exposed

Hundreds of child abusers have been arrested and many jailed during the three-year, global operation.

The investigation exposed more than 70,000 network members in the UK, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Brazil, where first evidence of the crimes emerged.

The Australians charged with involvement in the ring were aged from 19 to 84 years old.

Grant Edwards, of the Australian Federal Police, said: "These are heinous sexual predators."


Hundreds of young victims are said to have been taken out of danger.

The organisers set up an innocuous website that worked as a chatroom, but those who registered got access to more sinister sites where they were able to swap images and arrange to meet with victims.

The layered approach to the website allowed it to remain under the police radar.

Details of Operation Rescue were revealed at a press conference in The Hague, Holland, where the website server was hosted.

Peter Davies, head of the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre, said: "The scale and success of Operation Rescue has broken new ground.

"While these offenders felt anonymous in some way because they were using the internet to communicate, the technology was actually being used against them.

"Everything they did online, everyone they talked to or anything they shared could and was tracked by following the digital footprint."

In Britain, more than 120 suspects have been arrested and 30 so far convicted.

They include former scoutmaster John McMurdo, 38, who was jailed for three years in Plymouth for possessing and distributing nearly 2,000 indecent images of children.

He had encrypted computer disks, but refused to give police the passwords.

McMurdo told detectives he had become a scoutmaster to widen his social circle, but admitted fantasising about young boys in football kit.

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Gardener Stephen Palmer, 54, from Merseyside, collected 10,000 child abuse images and shared them over the internet with others in the US.

Police also found 288 videos at his home showing some of the most serious - Level 5 - images of youngsters. He was jailed for two years.

Another paedophile caught in a spin-off operation in Thailand was Robert Horsman, 47 - a property developer originally from Ipswich.

He was jailed for 14 years for luring a 12-year-old boy and sexually assaulting him in his home in Pattaya.

American and German suspects were also held during the Thai operation, which was supported by CEOP staff.

Police said the global operation against the network members continues, though they are confident they have arrested the most serious offenders.

involved 230 children?

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I wanted to offer my congratulations to the police involved in this latest operation.

I have to be honest and admit I have said some very uncomplimentary things about CEOP in the past, mainly aimed at Jim Gamble. I was always surprised at how little perceived success was being achieved for the outlay and often wondered whether the money would be better directed elsewhere to tackle on-line crime against children.

In my more paranoid moments of suspicion, I will even admit I suspected CEOP had been infiltrated by these sickos and was tipping them off, as such little success was being reported in the press. And all the while, we often saw Jim Gamble on television, boasting about CEOP (mainly for the benefit of self promotion I suspect) and jumping on any bandwagon he could find (most notably Madeleine McCann).

But this latest set of arrests is a good result and long may it continue. The only downer is the period of three years to get this far. How many extra children have become victims in that time? There must be a quicker way to get these people.

That’s all I wanted to say. I appreciate it has little bearing on Madeleine’s case but if it does show one thing, that CEOP is perfectly capable of success without Jim Gamble at the helm. Maybe Jim would like to consider a position on the board of Madeleine’s fund? Now that they are moving into multi-million pound publishing deals, I suspect they are in a position to offer him the considerable salary he always felt he deserved.

It doesnt actually say that ceop were behind this....it just says that ceop says....



Not all paedo online perps are caught because off ceop....