Paedophile ring exposed in Ireland

AN investigation by Prime Time journalists has uncovered evidence to suggest that an Irish paedophile ring is supplying horrific images of child rape and torture to the internet.

One journalist who worked on Crimes Against Children, an in-depth examination of the nightmare world of internet child pornography, said Irish children may have been subject to appalling abuse which had been photographed for distribution on the internet.

In a three-month period closely monitoring just five chat room sites, as many as 105 Irish paedophiles were identified more than were uncovered by Operation Amethyst.

These were "traders," who offered their own personal "catalogues" of horrific images to like-minded perverts.

Many of the images being traded by chat room paedophiles were extremely graphic in nature, and depicted scenes of rape, torture and incest.

Images catalogued by the Irish so-called traders were often flagged as "new" and "exclusive."

This led the Prime Time team to conclude that these images were not downloaded from existing paedophile sites for re-circulation, but had been created in the most horrific circumstances imaginable by Irish perverts.

Prime Time used the "Undernet" network to flush out the Irish chatroom paedophiles. These people used code names which were changed frequently, but, nonetheless, the journalists who infiltrated the chatroom network were able to identify the perpetrators of crimes against children.

Prime Time journalists said they were particularly alarmed by the number of chat room paedophiles their research uncovered in such a short period.

The graphic nature of the images being touted by Irish perverts was alarming. Prime Time files have been given to the gardaí.

Under Operation Amethyst in 2001, gardaí seized almost 100 computers suspected of containing child pornographic images.

The computers were seized after a series of searches and a number of high-profile court cases followed.

One in five men who download internet child porn pictures also abuse children outside the internet, often taking pictures as they do so, according to research.

One recent US study put this figure at 36% of internet paedophiles. The more pictures a man has downloaded, the more dangerous he is to children in his environment.