Internet perverts spared maximum jail terms

Seven men have escaped a maximum jail sentence despite taking part in the world's largest internet paedophile ring.

The longest term passed at Kingston Crown Court on the members of the Wonderland club was 30 months. The shortest was a year.

Judge Kenneth Macrae condemned them for abusing children for their own pleasure.

He told the seven, who stood impassively in the dock: "Children represent the future. They should be cared for and protected.

"All of you subscribed to Wonderland and similar operations, betraying the principle by the use and abuse of children for your own perverted gratification."

But Judge Macrae told the men that despite "pandering to the basest interests of man" they would have to be given credit for pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute indecent images of children.

The men admitted swapping thousands of photos of children and even babies.

One of the defendants, unemployed David Hines, 30, of Bognor Regis, West Sussex, who traded images under the nickname "Mutt's Nutts", said: "We just didn't see it as abuse. We saw it as there were some children involved in relationships."

The others in the dock were: Ian Baldock, 31, an Oxford University Press computer consultant, of St Leonards, East Sussex; Antoni Skinner, a computer consultant of Cheltenham, Gloucester, Ahmed Ali, 31, a taxi driver from Tulse Hill, south London, Andrew Barlow, 25, of Bletchley, Milton Keynes, Frederick Stephens, 46, a taxi driver of Hayes, west London, and Gavin Seagers, 29, a computer consultant and Sea Cadets youth leader, of Dartford, Kent.