Online Internet paedophile network shut down

Legalbrief reports that the three-year operation resulted in the exposure of 70 000 members. The investigation, Operation Rescue, which was led by the UK's National Centre for Child Protection, was joined by Europol, the US immigration and customs enforcement agency, and police from Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Canada. The Guardian reports that it identified 670 suspects and 230 abused or at-risk children globally. Some of the first arrests were made in Thailand. The network hid behind boylover.net, a legal forum which attempted to function covertly by operating as a discussion-only forum where members could share their sexual interest in young boys without committing any offence. But members, having made contact, would then move to more private channels such as e-mail to exchange and share images of children being abused. The founder and owner of the Web site, Amir Ish-Hurwitz (37), from the Netherlands, was jailed by a Dutch court last Wednesday, triggering the decision to publicise the scale of the police operation, says the report. According to a report on the iafrica.com site, one third of the arrests were made in the UK. 'Six-hundred-and-seventy suspects have been identified, 184 arrests have already been made and 230 children, the victims of these terrible crimes, have been identified and rescued from further harm,' director Rob Wainwright said. 'We expect these numbers to rise further,' he said, adding: 'This is already the biggest case of its kind we have ever seen.' According to an ABC News report, four Australian children have been identified as victims and have been moved into the care of support services. Most of the suspects arrested were in positions of trust and included police officers, youth leaders and teachers. The three-year multinational police operation was driven by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. The AFP infiltrated boylover.net following a tip-off in 2007. Full report in The Guardian Full report on the iafrica.com site Full ABC News report

Meanwhile, Bosnian police have seized around 2m child pornography pictures and 7 000 video clips during the arrest of a man accused of being in an international online abuse ring. The Independent reports that the unidentified 46-year-old was held over the weekend following a raid on his home in the northern town of Derventa. A police spokesperson described the suspect as an 'important member' of the international paedophile community but he appeared not to be linked with the paedophile ring centred in the Netherlands. Full report in The Independent

In another separate case, a 33-year-old US woman is going to prison for 20 years after being convicted of performing sex acts on a two-year-old child while a man in the UK watched live via a Web cam. Julie Carr of Mars Hill, Maine, pleaded guilty in February 2010 after admitting in Federal Court she sent four videos to a man in the UK. According to a report on the News24 site, she was sentenced in a Federal Court in Bangor. US District Judge John Woodcock said the sentence was meant to protect people who could not protect themselves. Police in the West Midlands region of England discovered the videos, which were recorded in June 2009 while investigating another child pornography case. Full report on the News24 site