An international probe has cracked a pedophile ring that streamed live sexual abuse of Filipino children over the Internet, leading to dozens of arrests, police in the Philippines, Britain and Australia said yesterday.
Under Operation Endeavour, which spanned a dozen nations, 29 people have been arrested, including 11 in the Philippines, while three other ongoing probes have identified 733 suspects, Britain’s National Crime Agency said.
Fifteen child victims aged between six and 15 have been rescued, it added.
“This is part of our intensified efforts to end this scourge ... of live streaming of child sexual abuse” to order by foreign pedophiles, said Senior Superintendent Gilbert Sosa, head of the Philippine police’s anti-cybercrime unit.
“This has become a major problem in the Philippines, where in some cases even the parents are involved,” he said, declining to give specific details that could compromise ongoing operations.
Sosa said that severe poverty had forced many youngsters into prostitution or into working in so-called cybersex dens, a booming business believed to be focused on the central island of Cebu.
Britain’s crime agency said Operation Endeavour began in 2012 with the discovery of obscene videos on a British pedophile’s computer.
The British man, Timothy Ford, was sentenced in March last year to eight-and-a-half years in prison, while an associate, Thomas Owens, was convicted four months later.
Both men were said to have paid for live abuse of children on the Internet and had at one point planned to travel to the Philippines to carry out “contact abuse” of minors.
Authorities in 12 countries were involved in the arrest of 29 suspects, the British crime agency said. Of 17 British suspects, five have been convicted and nine investigations are ongoing.
“Extreme poverty, the increasing availability of high speed Internet and the existence of a vast and comparatively wealthy overseas customer base has led to organized crime groups exploiting children for financial gain,” it said in a statement.
The agency called abuse in developing countries “a significant and emerging threat.”
“This investigation has identified some extremely dangerous child sexual offenders who believed paying for children to be abused to order was something they could get away with,” said Andy Baker, deputy director of the agency’s child exploitation and online protection command.
“Protecting the victims of abuse is our priority and that means attacking every link in the chain, from dismantling the organized groups who are motivated by profit through to targeting their customers,” he added.
The Australian Federal Police said it had executed six search warrants under the international operation that had led to the arrest of three Australians.
“Two of the men were arrested in Western Australia and one Sydney man was arrested by the Royal Thai Police in Bangkok,” a police statement said.
“Hundreds of thousands of images and videos depicting online child sexual exploitation, including children as young as five years old, were found during the warrants,” it said.
The Australian offenders allegedly financed and ordered child abuse “shows” from the Philippines.
Police operations in the Philippines have focused on the impoverished village of Ibabao in Cebu.
In September last year, a Filipino couple in their 30s were arrested in Ibabao for forcing their three young children to engage in sex acts and charging clients up to US$100 each to watch using Web cams.
Twelve other children were subsequently rescued, also in Ibabao, and put in the care of government social workers, police records showed.
“Other operations elsewhere in the Philippines are ongoing and we are not at liberty to discuss them at length because we might compromise them,” Sosa said.
Britain’s crime agency said three other investigations into live streaming of child abuse have netted 733 suspects globally, including 139 in Britain and 594 overseas.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in