Police Smash 'Biggest Ever' Paedo Network

British police have helped smash what they believe is the biggest-ever online paedophile network.





More than 70,000 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.








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. (from SKY)

Good.

Hope this sends out the right message and children are protected as a result.

Some of those sentences seem a bit 'light' in comparison what the local Courts give out!! .

i agree dell...wonder if any arrests will be made in guernsey this time x