Nearly 400 children have been rescued and 348 adults arrested
following an expansive and “extraordinary” international child
pornography investigation, Canadian police announced Thursday.
The three-year project, named Project Spade, began when undercover
officers with the Toronto Police Service Child Exploitation service made
contact with a Toronto man allegedly sharing “very graphic images” of
child sexual abuse in Oct. 2010, Toronto Police Service Chief William
Blair said at a press conference on Thursday.
Police said their investigation revealed an entire child movie
production and distribution company in Toronto operating via the web
site azovfilms.com.
The site was run by 42-year old Brian Way, according to police, and
sold and distributed images of child exploitation to people across the
world.
Inspector Joanna Beaven-Desjardins, head of Toronto’s Sex Crimes
Unit, said they enlisted the help of the United States Postal Inspection
Service since many of the videos were being exported to the U.S. and
began a joint investigation.
After a seven-month long investigation, officers executed search
warrants across the city of Toronto including at the business, located
in the city’s West End.
Investigators catalogued hundreds of thousands of images and videos
of “horrific sexual acts against very young children, some of the worst
they have ever viewed,” Inspector Beaven-Desjardins said at the press
conference.
Police seized over 45 terabytes of data from the $4-million business
that distributed to over 50 counties including Australia, Spain, Mexico,
Sweden and Greece.
As a result of the investigation thus far, 50 people were arrested in
Ontario, 58 in the rest of Canada, 76 in the United States, and 164
internationally.
What was most alarming, Inspector Beaven-Desjardins said, was that
many of the arrests were of people who worked with or closely interacted
with children.
Among those arrested were 40 school teachers, nine doctors and
nurses, six law enforcement personnel, nine pastors and priests and
three foster parents, she said.
Citing a particularly egregious example, she said police found over
350,000 images and over 9,000 videos of child sexual abuse in the home
of a retired Canadian school teacher. Some of the images were of
children known to the man and he was also charged with sexually abusing a
child relative.
The inspector said an indispensable aspect to the success of the
operation and the rescue of 386 children from child exploitation was the
expansive cooperation between Toronto police and organizations
worldwide.
“[This] confirms that when we work together regardless of the borders
that divide us we can successfully take down those who not only prey on
our most vulnerable but also profit from it,” she said.
Police said the children were “rescued from child exploitation” but did not give more details.
Way was charged with 24 counts, including possession of, distribution of, and importing and exporting child pornography.
The investigation is ongoing and more arrests could be made, police said.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/nearly-400-children-rescued-348-adults-arrested-canadian-child-pornography-f2D11599561
Tuesday, December 06, 2016
Baby Skeletons Found as Human Trafficking Probe Widens in Bengal.
Kolkata: Police in West Bengal have rescued 13 babies and discovered the skeletons of two infants in raids on homes for the elderly and mentally disabled, as a probe into a suspected international human trafficking ring widened on Monday.
Ten infants, all under one year old, were found on Friday in a home for the mentally disabled run by a charity in the impoverished district of South 24 Parganas.
While in another raid in the neighbouring district of North 24 Parganas, the remains of two infants were found in office premises of a charity which ran an adoption centre.
The raids come after the discovery of three newborn babies on Nov. 21 hidden inside cardboard biscuit boxes in a locked storeroom in a nursing home, where women would come to deliver or have an abortion.
Rajesh Kumar of West Bengal’s Crime Investigation Department (CID), said 18 people had been arrested for taking the newborn babies and trafficking them for adoption in India and overseas.
“It is a huge network of NGOs, nursing homes, doctors and middlemen dealing in illegal adoption and baby trafficking that the police have busted. Our men are now building on the huge leads they have already got in this case,” Kumar, CID’s Additional Director General said on Monday.
Initial investigations revealed that unmarried girls and women who visited the clinics for an abortion were persuaded by staff to give birth and sell their babies.
The police did not give a price, but local news reports said the mothers were given 300,000 rupees ($4,380) for a boy and 100,000 rupees ($1,460) for a girl.
Babies were also stolen from women who delivered at the clinics, but who were told by staff their children were stillborn. Some were even given the bodies of stillborn babies preserved by the clinics to dupe parents, police said.
The babies were then smuggled in biscuit containers to adoption centres, homes for the mentally disabled and elderly people, where they were kept until their adoption was organised.
Those arrested included the owners of the clinics, midwives, doctors, owners of the charities, as well as court clerks who are accused of forging documentation for the babies.
BABIES, SKELETONS, FOREX FOUND
South Asia, with India at its centre, is one of the fastest-growing regions for human trafficking in the world.
Gangs sell thousands of victims into bonded labour every year or hire them out to exploitative bosses as domestic servants, or sectors such as farming and manufacturing. Many women and girls are sold into brothels.
Following last Monday’s raid on the nursing home in Baduria, 80 km (50 miles) from Kolkata, interrogation of clinic staff led police to conduct over 20 raids in what police say appears to be a highly organised human trafficking racket.
They included a swoop on the offices of an adoption centre run by a charity in Machlandapur, 25 km (15 miles) away, where police on Friday found the skeletal remains of two infants, who are suspected to have died there while awaiting sale.
The same day police also found ten babies lying on a sheet on the ground on the second floor of a charitable home for mentally disabled people in Behala. The infants showed signs of malnourishment and some had chest and skin infections.
Kumar said one of the doctors arrested on suspicion of involvement in the baby smuggling racket had over $3,200 in U.S. dollars, euros and Hong Kong dollars in his possession, suggesting the infants were being sold overseas.
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