Dismay as international paedophile probe fails

Police chiefs are dismayed that no one found to have accessed child pornography on the web is being prosecuted for abuse despite officers having "grave doubts" about the safety of children living with them.

According to the senior officers, the 16-month operation, costing millions of pounds and involving all eight Scottish police forces, failed to gather the necessary evidence.

The Scottish arm of Operation Ore was wound up three weeks ago after investigating some 350 people north of the Border, about 200 of whom were in Strathclyde and 70 in Lothian and Borders.

One member of the Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland (ACPOS) who was involved in planning and pursuing the investigation north of the Border and asked not to be named said: "On many occasions I heard that officers had experienced grave doubts about the safety of certain children, but nobody reported anything to us so we could not press charges. This means that after expending a massive chunk of our resources on this inquiry, not a single person will be convicted of ‘hands-on’ abuse.

"That would not trouble us if we thought that all the men who were looking at child porn on their computer were just sad creeps who did not pose a risk to the children in their lives, but that is not the conclusion that was drawn from every raid."

The National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) was given a list of more than 7,200 UK suspects by the FBI after American investigators took over a website in 1998 used by 75,000 subscribers worldwide accessing hundreds of illegal pay-to-view sites by credit card.

It is understood that NCIS decided some 2,000 UK subscribers out of more than 7,200 suspects should be pursued.

Computer equipment and other items have been removed and examined for evidence linking the owners to paid-for child porn sites. The operation has been a massive drain on resources, partly due to the rigorous standards of evidence-gathering. Each computer seized can take experts many months to examine at an estimated average cost of 2,000.

Celebrities, lawyers, police officers, teachers and clergymen have been among those arrested under Operation Ore.

Last week, Detective Constable Brian Stevens, a family liaison officer in the Soham double-murder inquiry, was cleared of charges of having illegal images on his computer and of sexually assaulting two girls. He is just one of some 50 police officers in the UK who have become entangled in Operation Ore’s web.

However, British forces were overwhelmed by the scale of the operation and, as the months passed, tough decisions had to be made to dispose of some cases with a warning. Some of those who have been caught, including the rock star Pete Townshend - who said he accessed the sites for research purposes - have been cautioned and added to the sex offenders’ register.

The Scottish courts are now experiencing a steady trickle of cases linked to the inquiry and experts estimate it will be another two years before every case is concluded.

Under current legislation, people convicted of possessing child pornography face a maximum sentence of five years, distribution carries a maximum penalty of 10 years. The maximum sentence for child abuse is life.

Expressing his disappointment that no sex abuse charges have been brought, the senior member of ACPOS said: "When we received our lists from the FBI, there were so many names that we had to prioritise. We had to go first of all to those who had access to children, either through their jobs or in the home."

Last night, Anne Houston, director of the helpline Childline Scotland, said: "We hear from hundreds of children every year who tell us they have been sexually abused. Every image of child abuse on the internet is a crime scene.

"If Operation Ore is to be wound down, we very much hope police take child abuse on the internet seriously and continue to put resources into catching the perpetrators."

SNP MSP Nicola Sturgeon, the shadow justice minister, said she understood the senior officers’ frustration: "It’s worrying if the police have suspicions that people are involved in child abuse and nobody is going to be convicted."