Veneer of respectability that hid horrendous child-porn crimes

The nerve centre of their sickening operation to distribute millions of child porn images, was the house Ian Frost shared with partner Paul Rowland in a Lincolnshire hamlet.

But Paul Frost, a married IT consultant, was also helping to run the a series of so-called “newsgroups” from his home in South Yorkshire and continued to do so even after police took an interest.

All three men initially claimed in police interviews that they were running a legitimate internet business and had no control over what was being posted on the websites by users.

But later, Rowland became the first to plead guilty to a series of charges relating to the possession and creation of images, some of which were at the worst level.

A fourth man involved, Ian Sambridge, from St Albans, was also an IT consultant who was linked through friends to Ian Frost and his newsgroup operation.

Officers described the defendants’ operation as being like a “virtual notice board”. They charged different prices which increased in line with the number of months of access to the site, and how much material subscribers wanted to download from news service websites which allow online discussion on a vast array of topics.

They offer access to thousands of “folders” known as newsgroups which focus on a particular topic of interest. Members can view and post comments, pictures and videos in them.

Many of the users were not engaged in illegal activities, exchanging information about innocent hobbies such as cycling and football and do not need to fear police action.

But beneath the seemingly innocent facade, up to 50 per cent of the content of the sites, which were uncensored and run via a server in West Yorkshire, was child porn being distributed around the world.

Users were able to download pictures “pinned” to the notice board by other paedophiles and were also able to put up images from their own collections for others to download.

Operators of newsgroups tell their users that they will be untraceable, and that no “electronic footprint” will be detectable, making them attractive to paedophiles looking to cover their tracks.

But the discovery of the server in the Lincolnshire house gave police officers a previously unavailable insight into the kind of people who were using the sites for child pornography.

Police forces from across the East Midlands were called in to help Lincolnshire Police with the examination of the material. They were assisted by officers from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Agency, in particular their victim identification team whose job it is to track down children used by paedophiles.

A total of 1.3 million emails have been analysed by officers who have viewed and categorised 5.5 million images and nearly 6,000 films.

Det Supt Paul Gibson, who was in day-to-day control of the massive examination of the images, said it had been a “harrowing experience”.

Officers were able to “forensically examine” records of those who had accessed images through the server and track them down.

Among those unmasked as paedophiles by the operation so far are a GP, several police officers, a senior NHS manager, a teaching assistant, a scout leader, youth workers and a school crossing patrol worker arrested by Humberside Police.

Officers are still pursuing prosecutions against those found to have been subscribers in the UK while files have been prepared for foreign forces to act upon.

Police said that although Rowland had pleaded guilty to child porn offences, it was not clear whether the other three men took sexual gratification from the images they peddled.

There is no sign of the millions of pounds that the operation had made. Now the four have admitted their crimes, confiscation proceedings will start against them.