A giant paedophile ring with a worldwide reach was broken
apart during a three-year inquiry which led to the arrests of hundreds of
individuals, including clergymen and teachers, and the rescue of nearly 400
children who were at risk, Canadian police have revealed.
In one of the biggest such operations ever seen,
investigators uncovered an octopus-like child-porn network centred on a
now-shuttered sex-film business in Toronto. Its tentacles extended across
Canada, where 108 people have been taken into custody, and to six continents.
In the US, 76 people were arrested while others have been rounded up in several
European countries.
While the investigation, Project Spade, was led by the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), it was pursued with the collaboration of the US
Postal Inspection Service and law enforcement agencies in Sweden, Spain,
Mexico, Australia, South Africa and Hong Kong, officials said.
While it is not the first such ring to be uncovered, it is
the identities of some of those accused of consuming and helping to create the
material that will attract attention.
“The arrests included 40 schoolteachers, nine doctors and
nurses, 32 people who volunteered with children, six law-enforcement personnel,
nine pastors or priests and three foster parents,” said inspector Joanna
Beavan-Desjardins.
Accused of being at the ring’s hub is a Toronto resident
identified as Brian Way, 42. Police alleged that Mr Way, as the owner of Azov
Films, solicited and distributed on a global basis vast volumes of videos
featuring underage and usually naked boys, as well as criminal sex acts.
Investigators who raided Azov Films in 2011 found hundreds
of thousand of the images featuring “horrific acts of sexual abuse – some of
the worst they have seen”, added Ms Beavan-Desjardins, who heads the Toronto
police sex crimes unit.
As it unfolded, the investigation triggered 341 arrests
around the world and the taking into care of 386 children. Some of those
arrested have already pleaded guilty and are behind bars, while others are
still before the courts. Mr Way is charged with 24 offences including making,
possessing, distributing, exporting and selling the explicit images of boys,
said to range in age from toddlers to teenagers.
The Toronto Star newspaper, which said it had been granted
exclusive background access to Project Spade, reported that clients of Mr Way
in Canada alone included an Ontario ice-hockey coach, a Toronto teacher, a
priest, a Scout leader in Quebec and a retired high?school headmaster in Nova
Scotia. Mr Way himself is in custody and faces a first preliminary court
hearing in December.
The sweep of arrests worldwide began after investigators
viewed more than 100 of Azov’s films and cross-referenced online purchases of
those titles with people on a customer list found at Mr Way’s premises. His
business is alleged to have made $4m in revenues. Customers could visit the
home page of a website with a top 10 of the most popular movies and purchase
them as if it were Amazon.
The films were made with video clips allegedly sent to Mr
Way by collaborators around the world. Films viewed by police included
sequences of naked boys shot in Romania, Ukraine and Germany.
“This is a crime which is hidden, and which without this
kind of operation we can put to the light,” Spain’s chief inspector Luis Garcia
told the Toronto Star. “We can find hands-on abuse, and we could never have
known about this in any other way.”
Forty-two people have been investigated in Spain and 19
children rescued.
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