12 South Australians in global child porn bust
SA Police say 12 South Australian men have been arrested or reported as a result of an international operation investigating a Canadian child pornography ring.
Police said this morning that eight men were arrested or reported by SAPOL, while four were arrested by Australian Federal Police (AFP).
“Between August and November 2013, detectives from SAPOL’s Sexual Crime Investigation Branch together with the AFP and Canadian Authorities conducted the joint operation,” SAPOL said this morning.
“Those arrested or reported by South Australia Police have been charged with numerous offences.”
- A 49-year-old Payneham South man was arrested for two counts of possessing child exploitation material and will appear in the Adelaide Magistrates Court on 9 December.
- A 47-year-old Clearview man was reported for using a carriage service to access child exploitation material, using the postal service for child exploitation material, and two counts of possessing child exploitation material. He will be summons to appear in court at a later date.
- A 36-year-old Mount Gambier man was arrested for taking steps to access child exploitation material and will appear in the Mt Gambier Magistrates Court on 2 December.
You might like
- A 51-year-old Ascot Park man was arrested for two counts of possessing child exploitation material, one count of using the postal service for child exploitation material and one count of using a carriage service to access child exploitation material. He will next appear in the Adelaide Magistrates Court on 21 January 2014.
- A 54-year-old Mount Gambier man was reported for possessing child exploitation material and will be summons to appear in court at a later date.
- An 84-year-old Warradale man was reported for two counts of possessing child exploitation material and will be summons to appear in court at a later date.
- A 73-year-old Alberton man was reported for one count of possessing child exploitation material and will be summons to appear in court at a later date.
- A 44-year-old Elizabeth man was arrested for two counts of using a postal service for child exploitation material and two counts of possessing child exploitation material. He will appear in the Adelaide Magistrates Court on 8 January 2014.
The three-year investigation was announced by Canadian authorities on Thursday night.
Investigators said six Australian children are among the 386 around the world who have been removed from harm.
More than 340 suspects around the world, including 65 Australians, were arrested during the swoop that was led by Toronto police.
Stay informed, daily
The 65 Australians arrested have been charged with 399 offences.
In a statement, Toronto police said they’d charged Canadian Brian Way, 42, with a string of offences related to running a child exploitation website, which allegedly made more than $4 million in its years of operating.
Way allegedly paid people to film children, including some in Eastern European countries, so he could create and sell child exploitation movies on his website.
The head of the Canadian operation, Inspector Joanna Beaven, said police allegedly found hundreds of thousands of images and videos detailing “horrific sexual acts against very young children”.
“Some of the worst that they have ever viewed,” she said.
The investigation stretches back to October 2010, when undercover police officers made contact with a man on the internet sharing very graphic images of children.
They traced the images to a Toronto man, and discovered he was running an online exploitation movie, production and distribution network.
Inspector Beaven said customers could place orders from around the world for videos, which were then mailed or provided online.
In May 2011, police swooped on Way and spent four days combing the company’s premises, where they located a whopping 45 terabytes of data.
The investigation spread to 50 other nations, including Australia, leading to the arrest of 348 people worldwide.
Authorities said 40 school teachers, 32 child volunteers, nine doctors and nurses, nine pastors or priests and three foster parents were among those arrested.
The arrests included a lawyer and youth baseball coach in the US who pleaded guilty to producing more than 500 videos of children under the age of 16 who he sexually molested, a US school employee who admitted placing a hidden video camera in students’ restrooms and a Texas police sergeant who pleaded guilty to producing a video of a child involved in sexually explicit conduct.
– with AAP
