Doubts
cast over success of child porn inquiry
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=2015062005
Scotsman
- 30th September 2005
MORE than
100 paedophiles in Scotland have been convicted following the biggest
internet porn investigation ever conducted by police, senior officers
have revealed.
With all
but one of the 420 cases investigated by Scotland's eight forces
under Operation Ore dealt with, 102 people have been convicted of
having pornographic images of children.
And the
National Crime Squad yesterday revealed that 120 children across
the UK have been rescued from abuse as a result of the crackdown.
But critics
point to the apparently low conviction rate compared to the number
of cases investigated and claim there has been a human cost to the
international operation as a result of flaws in the evidence which
led to hundreds of innocent people being subjected to intensive
police investigations, some lasting more than a year.
Others
say more than 33 Britons have committed suicide after being targeted
by police since the operation was launched three years ago.
Meanwhile,
The Scotsman has learned that one Scottish force is being sued by
a man who was investigated. The man, from Glasgow, was suspended
from his job for 14 months after police raided his flat and seized
his computer equipment. He was eventually cleared but says the ordeal
drove him to brink of suicide.
Operation
Ore was launched three years ago after 7,200 names were supplied
to British police by their US counterparts.
The men
on the list were accused of having paid for child porn through a
Texas-based website called Landslide. The most high-profile name
was rock star Pete Townshend, who was later absolved.
Scottish
police say around 420 names of people whose credit card details
appeared on Landslide were passed to them by the National Crime
Squad. Around 250 homes were searched, more than 500 computers and
accessories seized and 120 arrests made.
As the
list was three years old, some suspects had died or left the country.
Many other investigations reached a dead end because the time delay
meant police were unable to find evidence of child images as suspects
had changed their computer.
A spokeswoman
for Strathclyde Police said 96 suspects were identified and 22 people
convicted.
Lothian
and Borders Police identified 82 suspects, 26 of whom were found
guilty. Grampian Police carried out 35 investigations and 15 people
were convicted. In Tayside, 15 investigations were carried out,
leading to eight convictions.
Central
Scotland Police undertook 12 investigations which led to seven convictions.
In Fife, 29 people were targeted leading to eight convictions with
one case pending. Northern Constabulary identified 24 suspects of
whom 13 were found guilty. In Dumfries and Galloway, seven targets
were identified and three convictions secured.
Senior
officers say the operation has been a success, but one expert witness
has described it as a "witch-hunt" founded on flawed evidence.
Duncan
Campbell, who has worked as a computer expert in several Operation
Ore cases, has rubbished claims by American law enforcers that everyone
who went to Landslide - which allowed access to 400 adult sites
- always saw the front-page screen banner "Click Here [for]
Child Porn".
He claims
that the "child porn" banner was in fact a temporary advertisement
for another site. That, he says, led police to swoop on many hundreds
of people across the UK who had accessed legal adult sites only.
Mr Campbell told The Scotsman: "I have been instructed by more
than ten Operation Ore defendants and every one of them, including
those completely unjustly accused, contemplated taking their own
lives.
"That
is the degree of the psychological effect of being treated in the
way Ore defendants were treated.
"The
success of Operation Ore is that a large number of people were properly
convicted. But the disaster is the lack of judgment and excess of
zeal in the way the police hounded the innocent. It has become a
witchhunt." Mr Campbell said the accusations have led to 33
suicides.
Jim Gamble,
deputy director- general of the National Crime Squad, yesterday
admitted there were "difficulties" in the early stages
- but denied police had taken a "production line" approach
to investigations.
"Every
case has been investigated on its own merits. Some people say there
has been a production line approach to Operation Ore, but that isn't
the case.
"Operation
Ore came to us in massive numbers. There were over 7,000 people
suspected of going on the Landslide site and each one of those had
to be investigated," Mr Gamble said.
"With
these sorts of allegations, it's always going to be difficult. Each
police force took extremely seriously the issues in respect of the
stigma attached to this type of investigation.
"It
takes months upon months sometimes to examine all the computer hardware
involved."
Mr Gamble
said he sympathised with innocent people who suffered the stigma
of being a suspect, but added: "We've now up to 120 children
who have been rescued from abuse and violence as a result of Operation
Ore. What would people be saying if we hadn't investigated these
cases?"
Deputy
Chief Constable Bob Ovens, spokesman on sex offenders for the Association
of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, said the operation was necessary
to clamp down on the worldwide abuse of children.
He said:
"This is about protecting children not only in Scotland and
the UK but across the world. The operation has heightened awareness
of the abuse of children and also uncovered a number of child protection
issues.
"People
who create these images are causing huge abuse to children."
'I lost
my home, my marriage collapsed - I considered suicide'
WHEN David
was told that his credit card had been used to access a child-porn
website, his whole world collapsed.
That was
back in December 2002, but the 41-year-old, from Glasgow, recalls
the moment as if it was yesterday.
"I
was summoned to my boss's office, where two police officers were
waiting to inform me that I was accused of accessing an internet
site. At first they wouldn't tell me which site," said David,
who works in IT.
"I
was escorted from my workplace by four Strathclyde police officers
and taken to my home address, where another three or four cars full
of police were waiting. They searched my home, every room, and took
my computer and peripherals.
"I
was then taken to a police station and questioned for three hours
about child pornography - something I knew nothing about. 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."
David,
who did not wish to reveal his surname because of the stigma attached
to the allegations, said he was not charged, but was subjected to
a 14-month investigation. The inquiry was eventually dropped, but
he says the stress led to the breakup of his marriage.
He has
now become the first Operation Ore suspect in Scotland, and possibly
the UK, to sue a police force for suffering caused by the investigation.
He said:
"They had my computer and they wanted to look at the hard drive.
"I
was suspended from my job as I was subject to a criminal investigation.
I had to wait 14 months before the police eventually told me they
had found nothing illegal.
"The
police showed me a document all about me. It had details of credit
card transactions, my name, address, registration of car and a photograph
of this internet page that said 'click here for child porn'. I had
never seen this before in my life."
He added:
"My work held their own internal investigation after the police
had finished theirs. The strain it placed me under was unbelievable.
"My
marriage collapsed, I lost my home and at one stage I even contemplated
suicide.
"All
my neighbours would have seen the police arriving at my door. They
never said anything to my face, but the whispers would probably
have been going round."
And David
warned: "I know there are a lot more people out there whose
lives are also in tatters because of this."
Cameron
Fyfe, David's lawyer, said: "My client had a very good job,
but his life was pretty much ruined when he was accused of downloading
child porn."
