Video: Sheffield paedophile locked up with child porn ringleaders

In the first case of its kind in England and Wales, Paul Frost, 37, of Woodhouse, Sheffield, pleaded guilty to various charges of making, distributing and possessing indecent images of children, alongside his brother Ian, 35, and his partner Paul Rowland, 34.

Nottingham Crown Court heard that the main operation was run from the house that Ian Frost and Rowland shared in Martin Dales, near Woodhall Spa, Lincs.

Lincolnshire Police, which led the inquiry, said stopping the men had resulted in 132 children in the UK being protected and safeguarded, and a number of paedophiles being taken out of positions of trust, including teachers, doctors, youth workers and police officers.

The group had been involved in the running of illegal uncensored news groups on the internet in order to circulate the images and movies to 46 countries across the globe, detectives said.

Paul and Ian Frost, along with 32-year-old Ian Sambridge, from St Albans, all pleaded guilty to distributing indecent images of children while Rowland entered guilty pleas to distributing, making and possessing indecent images of children.

Sentencing them at Nottingham Crown Court yesterday, Mr Justice Calvert-Smith said the case was the first of its kind in England and Wales because it was prosecuting individuals for distribution through news servers.

He said he believed that each defendant had knowledge of the fact that indecent images of children were available on the service but chose not to remove them for financial gain.

He also commended the complex investigation by police and law enforcement agencies and described it as “painstaking and groundbreaking”.

Mr Justice Calvert-Smith jailed IT workers Ian Frost and Rowland for 33 months each.

He described Frost as the “leading light who devised the scheme and was the main beneficiary.”

Rowland, who stared at the floor as the judge spoke to him, was also ordered to undergo a sex offenders course as well as be subject to a sexual offences prevention order.

Paul Frost, also an IT technician, was jailed for 15 months while Sambridge, a legal adviser, was given a 12-month sentence suspended for two years.

The judge told them: “It is astonishing that four such people, well-educated, should choose to embark on the course that they did.

“It’s equally astonishing that in the seven-year investigation hardly a word of regret has fallen from the lips of any defendant for the victims depicted in their news groups.”

Detective Superintendent Paul Gibson said officers first received intelligence from German police in November 2005 that Ian Frost, who became civil partners with Rowland in 2009, was running a news service that had an association with indecent images of children.

Officers searched their home and found a massive computer server which had been used by the men and discovered that Paul Frost and Sambridge had also been running news groups containing sickening child images.

Lincolnshire Police ran its investigation with specialist officers from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).

Det Supt Gibson said illegal news services, which are legal if censored, were “unique” because they operate like a virtual noticeboard containing folders of particular interest that can be shared around the world.

Detectives also said the group’s offending spanned around seven years and netted the group about £2.2m, even though they did not appear to have extravagant lifestyles.

All four were arrested in April 2009 before being interviewed and charged in June 2010.