British police, aided by U.S. authorities, have smashed a global Internet pedophile ring that broadcast live videos of children being abused. Police have investigated more than 700 suspects worldwide and rescued 31 children in a 10-month probe, officials said Monday.
Some 200 suspects are based in Britain, said the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center, a government agency. Of the 31 children, some only a few months old, more than 15 were in Britain, the center said. British authorities would not give a breakdown of where the other suspects or children came from, but said more than half the suspects in Britain were already being prosecuted.
The ring was traced to an Internet chat room called “Kids the Light of Our Lives” that featured images of children being subjected to horrific sexual abuse, including the streaming live videos.
The host of the chat room, Timothy David Martyn Cox, 27, who used the online identity “Son of God,” admitted to nine counts of possessing and distributing indecent images, authorities said. Officials said they used tactics normally used against terrorism suspects and drug traffickers to infiltrate the pedophile ring.
What they found
Teams examining Timothy David Martyn Cox’s computer found 75,960 explicit images in addition to evidence that he had supplied 11,491 images to other site users.
