Global Pedophile Ring Busted
British Authorities Say More Than 700 Suspects Targeted, 31 Children Rescued
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Pedophilia Ring Smashed
After an international investigation, British authorities have smashed a global pedophilia ring. More than 700 suspects were rounded up worldwide. Elizabeth Palmer has more.
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Pedophile Ring Busted
CBS News RAW: Police in Britain have released video showing suspects and various aspects of an international operation to bust up a huge Internet pedophilia ring.
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Timothy David Martyn Cox, 27, of Buxhall, England is seen in a police handout photo after being arrested in September 2006 for allegedly running an Internet chatroom called "Kids the Light of Our Lives" that featured images of children being subjected to sexual abuse. (CBS/Virtual Global Taskforce)
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Some 200 suspects are based in the United Kingdom, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection center (CEOP) said. 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 streaming live videos of the abuse.
The British officials who announced the bust said 31 children, some of them as young as a few months, had been rescued from sexual exploitation by the operation. More than 15 of the children were in Britain.
"Today's verdict serves as a powerful warning to those using the Internet to facilitate the sexual exploitation of children," Jim Gamble, the agency's chief executive told a news conference.
Authorities said they used surveillance tactics normally used against terrorism suspects and drug traffickers to infiltrate the pedophile ring at its highest level.
The investigation involves agencies from 35 countries and lasted 10 months. Officials did not immediately provide a full breakdown of which countries were involved, but identified Canada, Australia and the United States as British officers' main partners in the investigation.
The host of the Web site, Timothy David Martyn Cox, 27, of Buxhall, England, who used the online identity "Son of God," admitted to nine counts of possessing and distributing indecent images, authorities said. Cox was given an indeterminate jail sentence Monday at Ipswich Crown Court, in eastern England.
The trail leading to Cox started in Canada with the arrest of 24 pedophiles, reports CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer. Police followed links from there to another ring in Tennessee and eventually to the apparent global ringmaster in Britain.
After his arrest in September, authorities were able to infiltrate the chat room and collect evidence on the other members.
The bust was announced by CEOP, but the crackdown was carried out under the auspices of an international law-enforcement cooperative known as the Virtual Global Taskforce, or VGT.
According to the VGT Web site, it is made up of Britain's CEOP (which also chairs the organization), the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Interpol, the Australian High Tech Crime Center, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Other countries' law enforcement agencies frequently work with the core members listed above.
The group's mission, according to the Web site, is to deliver "low-cost, high-impact initiatives that prevent and deter pedophiles from exploiting children online."
Toronto police said they had arrested 10 people since March 2006.
Details of involvement in the crackdown by U.S. agencies were yet to be made public. CEOP told CBS News that any role played by U.S. authorities would have to be confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security.
Officers posed as contributors and even pretended to be Cox during the investigation, running the chat room for 10 days. At no point did officers distribute illegal images.
Forensic teams examining Cox's computer found 75,960 indecent and explicit images in addition to evidence that he had supplied 11,491 images to other site users.
A man described as Cox's lieutenant, Gordon Mackintosh, tried to resurrect the chat room in January. Authorities in Britain, Canada, Australia and the U.S. again infiltrated the operation. Upon his arrest, they assumed Mackintosh's identify online and ran the chat room for three days while collecting information on offenders who traded images in the chat room.
Mackintosh, 33, pleaded guilty to 27 charges of making, possessing and distributing indecent images and videos. He is awaiting sentencing.
In February, authorities in Austria announced an even larger child pornography bust; claiming 2,360 suspects from 77 countries who paid to view videos depicting young children being sexually abused.
The FBI was investigating about 600 suspects in the United States as part of its joint role in the Austria bust.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.



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See all 81 CommentsEach one of these m*ther f*ck*rs should be hung by their testicles over an alligator pit.
Posted by ug_boy at 09:21 AM : Jun 18, 2007
In Texas, repeat offenders can face the death penalty.
This type of crime goes beyond the extreme and is deserving of not only execution, but a public one at that. Send these pathetic wastes of human flesh to the Middle East. I know Al Jazeera will jump all over televising that...
Foley?
Hello?
Posted by barbaraf4
RE: No, it is allowing these individuals to be free in society again and how many more millions are roaming free in society now.
Now I have to accept that white people can be evil too. I guess I'll have to shoot myself.
Big loss.
Posted by WiccanTexan at 09:33 AM : Jun 18, 2007
That is good, but why should it include "repeat"?
A person who is a repeat offender has been given the chance to ruin the life of another child.
People that sick and demented don't change. Why give them another chance?
Hello?????
"It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around the neck than to face the punishment in store for harming one of these little ones." (NLT)
Posted by rharrin1 at 09:49 AM : Jun 18, 2007
With all due respect this is a crime that has no boundries. I will not try to catagorize any one organization as being the sole source of this crime against nature.
You can be a 'repeat' offender simply because your girl friend accused you of rape. That is enough to get you listed on the Se x offenders site.
A person who is a repeat offender has been given the chance to ruin the life of another child.
People that sick and demented don't change. Why give them another chance?
Posted by last121868 at 10:24 AM : Jun 18, 2007
It was likely the only way it would pass. With the death penalty already highly criticized, having that as an option for someone who might technically fit the definition, but the crime doesn't warrant it - such as two teens or perhaps an older teen (16 and above) and a legal adult - would be a loose cannon in the system.
I don't know what defines "repeat offender" in the law.
Posted by rharrin1 at 09:49 AM : Jun 18, 2007
Give it a rest and show some compassion for the children, that's where your attention needs to be focused.
_______________
Abuse of children boggles my mind enough; that there are infants involved just goes beyond my scope of comprehension.
Enough of them.
If needed I will also contribute some high grade gasoline to remove as much of their infested remains as possible.
This is truly a major tragedy, but it is one that is not only common, but supported by some countries.
If you've ever been to Istanbul, Turkey, you may have heard of the facility known as "The Compound" where men, women, and children serve out their criminal sentences (or sentences of their fathers and husbands) by being *** slaves that the government makes money off of. Nobody is immune, from adult females to single digit aged kids of both sexes. Sickening...
Posted by seaslew at 10:56 AM : Jun 18, 2007
Yes, thank gos, and pray for the victims!
There's a part of me that says we should put the perverts each in their own electric chair set to "Low."
I hope these kids can get excellent counseling.
Posted by Nancy_Naive at 11:38 AM : Jun 18, 2007
TAME?! I beg to differ on your query of what world do WE come from. We're not talking simple "bad touching" here. We're talking the ripping apart of a child's body, pain in manners that we cannot comprehend.
Starving to death is horrific and likely comparable. But manufacturing cheap stuff in factories, while also very bad, is hardly in the same category IMHO.
'Massive Global Pedophile Ring Busted'
and now the bad news;
They don't hang monsters like this in the UK anymore.
Next best option...Sentence this Cox to six months in general population in a prison filled with hard working criminals. That should be plenty of time for them to forcefully demonstrate their displesure at being caged up with a sexual predetor
Posted by Nancy_Naive at 12:21 PM : Jun 18, 2007
I see. It's the total that's important. Of course, the fact that they found 31 doesn't mean that's the sum total. I'm sure many, many more are still hidden around the world.
Both situations are horrific. Nobody's disputing that. But thinking that we're in another world because people are upset about this and not mentioning other child abuse that is not a part of this article really IS naive.
"Wiccan, my dear girl"
Wow, haven't heard that in about 30 years. ;)
Posted by NavyRetired2
-Could you elaborate on this retired2?
And I had to laugh when Barbaraf4 said the "single most frightening thing about these situations is the realization of how ordinary these people look." WELL DUH!! What do you think they're going to look like? A mental or emotional abnormality doesn't mean its going to be a visible trait.
But what appalls me is the mob mentality on display here. Lets just tear down the cornerstone of our "enlightened" western democracy and throw the legal process out the window. Just listen to some of what you all have suggested for how to handle these people.
Beating to death
Dragged out and shot
Shot in the back of the head
Hanging
Slow-roasting electrocution
Chopped into chum bait
Allowed to be beaten by other inmates
So why don't we add in these time-worn favorites, hmm?
Boiling in oil - that always worked well.
Displayed in public stocks - entertain the kids by letting them take a whack at the sicko!
Iron maiden - retribution by perforation
Drawing and quartering - means new attractions at monster truck pulls.
Those who would take this out of the hands of the courts sicken me nearly as much as those arrested.
http://www.virtualglobaltaskforce.com/
Although battling and defeating abject evil in this case, I cannot help but wonder if the VGT isn't a gentle-looking front for other international operations involving other types of global conspiracies.
In fact, who knows just where the money trail stops from what was likely a very lucrative operation? It seems the sort of "business" that would attract not only sick individuals, but also organized crime these days, especially with the wide-ranging international flavor.
Then again, as Freud noted: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
The Mongols had a cute way of putting the culprit on a frame of wood after which they would ride by on their horses and cut a slice off some part of the body. If you had been a worthy fighter they would eat the slice, otherwise they gave it to the dogs where you could see it. As this tended to shorten the lifespan of the subject, they developed a method by which a guard would apply a blood clotting antiseptic coating to the wound (some type of marinade I presume) until the next rider came by. (works for me)
Posted by Hedonist3 at 01:48 PM : Jun 18, 2007
William wallace was not to keen about it when it happened to him (check out braveheart).
Wow, haven't heard that in about 30 years. ;)
Posted by WiccanTexan at 12:32 PM : Jun 18, 2007
When I was doing ISP tech support a woman customer loved to hear me say, 'ell I swannee' (Virginia mountain refrain)
I knew the story of William Wallace even before I saw Braveheart. That's the reason I went to see it. Drawing and quartering is exactly what these monsters need.
Those who enjoy viewing the videos - lock them up, check on all the children exposed to them.
We can never cure this (just as we can't cure any crime in the world), but more penalties, more police looking for them, more busts mean that some of the borderline types will get help or just not do it for fear of punishment. That'll do for me.
These sickos have existed since the dawn of time - we're finally doing something about them - but have no illusions that this is new, the modern world, the internet - this has always happened. Used to be it was just private business, a father the king of his castle, or the child's fault. That's all that has changed, that now we consider it a crime and prosecute it.
phydeux1
Even : "J. Edgar Hoover" (FBI Director)
Often enjoyed : A romp in bed with : "Young Boys"
Video tapped - Statements : From former FBI agents :
Describing how - They delivered young boys - For S*e*x*
Is evidence to that ! ! ! !
"Solicitation - Prostitution - Pimps"
The FBI - (Uncovered) - In one of it's more finest moments.
Congressman Foley and the Page.
(18yrs old - 3years) = 15 years old
This is "Not" - An isolated incident ! ! !
But ! - There was a time - When - They were a lot younger.
There were girls also - Most-Often, younger than the boys.
They "Did" come from - Selective - Juvenile detention centers.
They "Did" come from - Selective - Foster homes.
The - FBI - Played a prominent role, in all of this activity ! ! !
There is too much physcial evidence - to say otherwise.
Federal - State and other investigators -
Who have investigated this activity.
Have all stated - the same conclusion :
The "FBI" - Is a criminal organization.
The law enforcement echelon of the FBI , is simply a :
"Snow Job"
If you understand :
"Intimidation - Blackmail and Treason"
Illeagal (criminal) wiretaps and surveillance
If you understand, these real issues.
You will begin to understand - The reasons, how these -
Very young people, were used ! ! !
Little wonder why : The Bush Administration is :
Immune from :
"Criminal Complaints" or "Criminal Prosecution"
Lastdance
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