Internet Watch Foundation

PAEDOPHILES are being hunted down and brought to justice by detectives in Cambridgeshire.

A crackdown on child porn websites, dubbed Operation Solomon, has brought 28 internet paedophiles to court in the last three years, with more arrests to come.

The team behind the investigations, led by Det Insp Richard Winser, is part of Operation Ore, a worldwide hunt for online perverts.

Operation Solomon began in September 2002 after the FBI handed over a list of 270 people believed to be from the county whose credit card details had been seized from a child porn website.

Since the first investigation, a total of 62 people have been arrested in Cambridgeshire and 28 have been convicted and sentenced.

Det Insp Winser said: "We've had massive progress and we have been able to identify a large number of paedophiles, take their DNA and see if they have been travelling to other parts of the country to take part in child abuse."

Although the figures, obtained by the News under the Freedom of Information Act, fall far short of a 100 per cent arrest or conviction rate, Det Insp Winser said he was satisfied the most dangerous paedophiles had been caught.

"We have had to prioritise - people who have access to children have been put to the top of the list and dealt with first," he said.

"One of our first convictions was Derek West, a music teacher from St Neots who had clear access to children.

"Equally, Operation Solomon is just one part of the fight against online paedophiles and we have had to prioritise suspects in other operations who pose the most immediate danger to children."

He said some of the suspects in the original list of 270 had left the county, and their details had been handed on to the relevant force to ensure investigations were carried out.

The conviction rates were also hailed a success by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), an Oakington-based organisation set up nine years ago to monitor the web for images of child abuse.A spokeswoman said:

"Given the volume of suspects which stemmed from Operation Ore and the specialist police resources required to carry out thorough investigations of this nature, successfully prosecuting nearly 50 per cent of suspects in one area is a significant result.

"The IWF continue to work closely with all UK Police Forces and on average forwards intelligence relating to potential offenders every working day. In 2004, information which was forwarded and tracked by our internet hotline team contributed to at least nine arrests in the UK."

Operation Ore began when names of more than 7,000 people linked to an American child porn website were handed to police. Thomas Reedy was arrested for masterminding the child pornography ring which the police called 'Operation Landslide' and was jailed for 1,335 years.

In the UK,police have arrested more than 1,300 people who used credit cards to pay for downloading images from pay-per-view sites.