Pedophiles Are Being Identified Quickly

CBS News and the Associated Press are reporting that 31 children are now safe tonight after being rescued from an enormous pedophile network in the United Kingdom. The report says that more then 700 people around the world have been arrested in this particular case. Out of the 31 children that were rescued from the horrid conditions range in age from a months old and up. Also 15 of the children were in Britain.

The CBS and Associated Press report says that around 200 of the 700 arrested were working the pedphile ring out of the United Kingdom. They were first traced due to a website called "Kids the Light of Our Lives", the site had numerous pictures of the children being sexually abused, as well as having live video on the site of some of the abuse. The CBS/Associated Press report calls the images "horrific".

CBS and the Associated Press in their joint report said that the investigation involved 10 months of undercover work as well as the cooperation of 35 countries. The investigation tactics that were used according to authorities were "surveillance tactics normally used against terrorism suspects and drug traffickers to infiltrate the pedophile ring at its highest level." Although there has not been an entire release of the countries involved officials in Britain told CBS and the Associated Press that Australia, Canada, and the United States were the "main partners" in the investigation that lead to this bust.

The inner workings of this pedophile ring started with the web hosting owner which has been named by CBS and the Associated Press as Timothy David Martyn Cox who hails from England. Cox admitted to 9 counts of "possessing and distributing indecent images" and he was consequently given an "indeterminate jail sentence Monday ."

The joint report from CBS News and the Associated Press says that the way Cox was identified started in Canada where there were 24 people arrested. Then the trail lead authorities to Tennessee and then onto the "ringmaster" in Britain. Once Cox was in custody authorities used the opportunity to get into the chat/website and then were able to better identify other pedophiles that were accessing the site. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection center according to CBS and the AP made the announcement of the pedophile bust, however that are quick to point out that the actual "crackdown" was done by a "international law-enforcement cooperative known as the Virtual Global Taskforce, or VGT."

The report by CBS News and the Associated Press says that the Virtual Global Taskforce is comprised of Britain's local Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center, as well as "the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Interpol, the Australian High Tech Crime Center, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police."

The VGT pointed out to CBS and the Associated Press that during their investigation that they indeed pretended to be Timothy Cox, however they at no point in time distributed any illegal information or images. They also told CBS News and the Associated Press that Timothy Cox's computer upon being tested by forensic teams turned up to have "75,960 indecent and explicit images in addition to evidence that he had supplied 11,491 images to other site users."

It is also being reported by the CBS News network and the Associated Press that in February of this year that Austrian officials came forward with information of their own investigation that had led to the them identifying 2,360 individuals that had paid to view similar sites of children being sexually abused. With that case the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating 600 users in the United States.

With this report from CBS News and the Associated press it is evident there is a massive crackdown on sexual abusers, pedophiles, and child predators taking place around the world.

RESOURCES:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/18/world/main2942073.shtml