Accused in child porn inquiry to sue police

Key quote

"Huge numbers of lives have been destroyed by this. I am hoping hundreds of other innocent people will come forward" Brian Rothery, organiser of the class action.

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POLICE who conducted the UK's biggest ever child-porn investigation are facing legal action from former suspects who say their lives have been ruined.

About 30 people, including a number from Scotland, have put their names to a class action set to be launched against detectives behind Operation Ore.

They claim their lives have been devastated by an investigation which has left hundreds of innocent people tarred by the same brush as the guilty. And they say they have secured evidence which shows that the basis for the investigation was false.

But police insist they followed the correct procedures, while child welfare campaigners said the investigation proved paedophiles had "no place to hide".

Operation Ore was launched four years ago after the credit- card details of 7,200 people believed to have paid for child porn on the internet were supplied to British police by US detectives. More than 2,000 people have been convicted.

Scotland's eight police forces investigated 420 names on the list, which was passed to them by the National Crime Squad. About 250 homes were searched, and over 500 computers and accessories seized. Some 120 arrests were made and just over 100 were convicted.

Police suspected those on the list of having paid for child porn through a website called Landslide, which provided access to 300 adult sites.

But the group behind the legal action claims the UK investigation was seriously flawed. It says it has obtained the original Landslide database which proves that the police's central claim - that everyone entering the site had to go through a banner marked "click here (for) child porn" - was false.

It also claims to have found evidence of major credit-card fraud, which means some people's details appeared on the site without their knowledge.

Most of those involved in the class action, including at least two Scots, were later cleared of wrongdoing. A few, however, were convicted of offences but are protesting their innocence.

Brian Rothery, who is organising the class action, said there had been a huge human cost to the investigation, with at least 35 people in the UK having committed suicide.

"Huge numbers of lives have been destroyed by this. I am hoping hundreds of other innocent people will come forward," said Mr Rothery, from Ireland, who was not among those investigated under Operation Ore.

Chris Saltrese, who specialises in defending people falsely accused of sexual offences, has been enlisted to fight the case.

He said papers would be served on senior officers who worked for the now-defunct National Crime Squad (NCS).

The lawyer said: "Based on a preliminary view of the evidence, there seems to be a lot of erroneous information in the Landslide investigation.

"It seems the police over here have not picked up on this. As a consequence, people have been prosecuted for accessing child porn when in fact it's quite possible that never happened.

"If our action is successful, there's a possibility it will open the door for appeals. It does put serious question marks over the entire operation."

A spokesman for the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) centre, where former NCS officers are now based, defended the inquiry.

"We stand by the processes that Operation Ore followed and will use this opportunity to highlight the fact that in each case, where intelligence was passed to a local force, that force carried out its own independent investigation," he said.

Margaret McKay, chief executive of Children 1st, said the investigation played a vital role in exposing paedophiles: "Operation Ore showed that there is no place to hide. Children must be confident that they can come forward ... and that perpetrators of abuse will be dealt with."

Arrested at work and I lost my wife - but I was innocent

DAVID says he is only now piecing his life back together, four years after police arrived at his work and delivered the bombshell that he had apparently been accessing illegal websites.

In December 2002, the 42-year-old IT worker, from Glasgow, was summoned to his manager's office and told that officers were waiting outside.

Four Strathclyde Police officers escorted him to his home, where another three or four cars full of police were waiting. They searched his flat, seizing his computer and peripheral equipment.

He was then taken to a police station and questioned for about three hours.

"They told me my credit card had been used on two occasions to subscribe to Landslide, which provides access to thousands of adult porn sites.

"They said it meant I had been looking at child pornography," he said.

At that point David's life collapsed around him.

He was suspended from his work for 14 months while police continued their investigations. He said he was shown a file with details of credit card transactions, his name, address, registration of car and a photograph of an internet page that said "click here for child porn".

"I had never seen this before in my life," he insists.

The inquiry was eventually dropped.

No evidence was found, no charges filed. But he says the stress led to the break-up of his marriage.

David has a new partner and has managed to rebuild his life, but says the stigma of having been a suspected paedophile still lingers, which is why he does not wish to reveal his surname.

"I still feel there's a stigma attached to it.

"There's no doubt about my innocence but I cannot talk to some people about it. My close friends and family know about it - they don't doubt me for one second at all.

"Over the last few years, as I have gradually found out the truth, it's made me angry realising it was all completely unnecessary.

"If you were guilty you would say to yourself, 'fair enough', but most people didn't realise why their lives were destroyed overnight."

He dismisses suggestions that the legal action could result in guilty people being let off.

"It's not my job to establish someone's guilt. I'm not saying it was all lies.

"Some of the accusations were undoubtedly true. But the government and the police have got people thinking there's a paedophile waiting on every corner and that simply isn't true."

How the investigation started

OPERATION Ore was launched in 2002 after US authorities passed to British police the names of 7,200 people who had paid to use a Texas-based website, Landslide.

Thomas Reedy, who set up the website in 1996 with his wife, Janice, was found guilty of 89 charges, including sexual exploitation of minors and distribution of child porn.

He was sentenced to 1,335 years in prison, later reduced to 180 years on appeal.

In the US, a tiny fraction of those on the list were convicted, as police arrested only carefully selected targets caught in sting operations.

Among those arrested in the UK were the rock stars Pete Townshend, pictured, from The Who, and Robert Del Naja, from Massive Attack. Both were later cleared.