Fed: Police arrest 24 in nationwide child porn investigation

AAP General News (Australia)
12-20-2007
Fed: Police arrest 24 in nationwide child porn investigation

By Peter Veness

CANBERRA, Dec 20 AAP - They are the criminals that criminals despise.

Police today announced they had arrested 24 men who had downloaded photos of babies
and children being tortured.

The torture included rape.

Investigators in Western Australia, NSW, South Australia, Queensland and Victoria along
with federal police have been working for 11 months on Operation Irenic - today was the
first the public had heard of the work.

Police seized millions of images on hard drives and CDs, downloaded from predominantly
US-based websites, when they arrested the men who ranged in age from 30 to 70.

Kevin Zuccato heads the federal high tech crime operations office which is leading
the hunt for paedophiles and those who view child pornography.

He says the profile of these alleged criminals is impossible to pin down.

"This is a worldwide phenomenon.

"We see individuals who come from all walks of life. It's very difficult to categorise
them at all," Mr Zuccato told reporters in Canberra today.

"We had forensic psychologists, we had a person that worked in a television station,
we had teachers, an RSPCA worker, an ex-police officer (and) we had a retired person."

The children caught up in this abuse are diverse as well, causing headaches for those
trying to free them.

"They are caucasian, asian ... identifying exactly where they're from is an issue that
we're working with our international colleagues on."

At least one is Australian and authorities have removed the child from harm. Mr Zuccato
said police believe the child was being groomed for abuse.

These arrests are only the beginning if the amount of intelligence gathered by Operation
Irenic is any indication.

"If we've seized over one million images alone from the people that we've arrested
over the last month and that there were over 6,000 IP addresses identified in the Interpol
investigation, the number of images must number in the several millions and obviously
they're being shared," Mr Zuccato said.

IP addresses are the addresses of individual computers logged onto the internet and
can be changed or masked to avoid detection.

America's Federal Bureau of Investigation has been heavily involved in the hunt and
Mr Zuccato hinted there may be arrests in the US as the operation continues.

"With these types of investigations we don't stop at just arresting the people who
download the images," he said.

"Our main objective is to identify everybody that we possibly can (who is) involved
in these type of offence."

The investigation is global.

"We are networked, we are trying to move as fast as we possible can to ensure that
we save children.

"There will be arrests internationally."

As the work of hunting these people continues, the officers involved must keep viewing
sickening images and pretending to befriend people who Mr Zuccato describes as having
"sick fetishes and predilections".

"The men and women who are involved in this type of work, not only from a law enforcement
perspective but from NGOs and other government departments, I think, do one of the hardest
jobs that there is in law enforcement.

"What you will see is no greater commitment or passion to ensure that we identify who
is committing these offences and in particular when we identify a child at risk and save
that child (there is) no greater elation.

"I don't think there's any greater honour as a law enforcement officer than working
on this type of investigation."

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