Child porn crackdown sees 660 arrested

Several hundred suspected paedophiles including doctors, teachers and former police officers have been arrested in the biggest ever British crackdown on obscene images of children.

The unprecedented six-month operation headed by the National Crime Agency (NCA) saw 660 people held for downloading and sharing the sickening pictures, and has already led to charges for serious sexual assault.

Those arrested included a doctor who had access to more than one million depraved pictures, was found to have met up with boys and kept sex aids and rope in the boot of his car.

Scout leaders and care workers were also among the huge number of people held across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the vast majority had never before aroused suspicion.

The massive investigation, involving all 45 British police forces, led to 431 children who were in the “care, custody or control” of the suspects being “safeguarded”, including 127 who were identified as being at serious risk of harm.

Those arrested had used the internet or the so-called “dark web” — internet content that is not listed for access by normal search engines.

NCA deputy director general Phil Gormley said: “This operation has been about protecting children who are victims of, or might become victims of, sexual exploitation. Children are victimised not only when they are abused and the images first taken, but at every subsequent time that image is viewed by further offenders or distributed.”

Mr Gormley said he was “profoundly disappointed” that so many suspects had been arrested over this type of crime.

“The alternative is not to look under the stone, and we cannot afford not to look under this stone.”

The NCA would not reveal the precise tactics it had used, but in previous child abuse cases officers have gone undercover and posed as potential victims to lull sex offenders into showing their true colours.

Chief Constable Simon Bailey, the national lead for child abuse investigations, said that police can track paedophiles online, even when using the dark web.

“Law enforcement now has the capability to see what people are doing,” he said. “Six hundred and sixty people have currently been arrested, there will be more arrests. There is a clear message to anybody using the internet to facilitate and to commit this type of crime that you are vulnerable.”

Two years ago the NCA estimated that 50,000 people in Britain were involved in sharing child abuse images online, and in the past 20 years the number of images available has soared from an estimated 10,000 to tens of millions.

So far officers have searched 833 properties and examined 9,172 computers, phones and hard drives.