Child Pornography Ring Busted

Today the Department of Internal Affairs busted a child pornography ring operating in over 20 countries. Working in conjunction with overseas law enforcement agencies the New Zealand Censorship Compliance Unit was instrumental in bringing 55 offenders to justice.

“This is an important event” says Alan Bell, Director of child protection agency ECPAT Child ALERT. “It demonstrates that New Zealand has a very efficient and world class forensic unit and that offenders will be tracked down and caught no matter where they live. Included in the details of the case it was revealed that 5 New Zealanders were among the offenders and one of the child victims was from New Zealand.”

The 20 countries involved are: Australia, Bosnia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, England, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, The Netherlands, Tunisia, Turkey, United States and Venezuela.

“The identification and rescue of the child victims is paramount in these operations and the combined forces that responded to the lead from New Zealand are to be praised for their dedication to the task of preventing child sex abuse and the trading of the resulting images.” Bell says. “This case does not come as a surprise – unfortunately it is all too common and every effort must be made to eliminate the selling of children. Some offenders claim that as long as they don’t actually physically abuse the child directly they are doing no harm. This is a fallacy. Every time these images are viewed it increases the demand for new images and consequently more children become victims. It is a question of supply and demand.”

The ring was tracked down through illegal activity being discovered on social media sites including Facebook. Some of the images were of young children and babies being sexually abused. Sentencing of the offenders will follow.

ECPAT Child ALERT is a registered charitable trust working to prevent the sexual exploitation of children including child prostitution, child pornography and child trafficking.

ENDS

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