Gardaí closing in on web abuse viewers

GARDAÍ are hopeful they will be able to build a case against a number of Irish paedophiles who accessed images of children as young as three years old being raped.

The Garda Unit at Harcourt Street, Dublin, which investigatespaedophilia, has a number of leads on popele who accessed the Kids The Light of Our Lives website. That website featured images and films ofchildren being sexually assaulted and raped. Irish users of the site are being tracked down by gardaí.

“What we have at the moment are leads and what we need is to turn that into firm evidence that we would be happy to present before a court of law,” said Superintendent Kevin Donohue.

“As information is coming to us, we are taking those leads and investigating them. We have a number of live investigations ongoing at the moment.

“Because this type of investigation is particularly complex, because it is international by nature and because it is internet-based, very often one lead will bring you on three more other leads, so you are constantly digging down through the layers of intelligence, some of which have proved to be fruitless and some of which did reveal evidence.”

Three people have already been arrested north and south of the border. Searches have been carried out and computers have been seized.

More than 700 people worldwide are being investigated by police in relation to their use of the website.

The man behind the site, Englishman Timothy Cox, was sentenced on Monday to an indefinite detention after 75,000 images were found on his computer and it was established he had supplied 11,000 images to other site users.

Supt Donohue said there was no evidence at this stage to suggest any of the films or images were created in Ireland.

However, he said this could not be ruled out.

Mary Flaherty, chief executive of Children At Risk in Ireland said: “The evidence from our own hotline monitoring group would be most of the images they have traced relate to pornography made elsewhere, but we have been concerned that children coming to us have indicated that pictures and films have been taken and have expressed concern that these may be out there.”