International paedophile ring-leader jailed

Ian Green, 45, from Worthing, admitted 24 counts of making, possessing, distributing, and sharing up to 100,000 indecent images on Facebook at Chichester Crown Court.

He was also found guilty of breaching his requirements on the Sex Offenders Register. He has also been served with a Sexual Offences Prevention Order.

He was caught as part of an international operation which included police in Australia, America, Canada and the UK and has led to 11 arrests in total. The UK operation was led by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) centre and Sussex Police.

Sentencing Green, Judge Charles Byers said he was the instigator of a “sophisticated operation”.

“These are the sorts of images which right-thinking people can never condone.

The investigation began when intelligence from the Australian Federal Police (AFP) indicated that someone in the UK was in charge of a number of groups on Facebook which contained thousands of images of children being abused.

Neil Gaughan from the AFP said: “Criminal activity of this type is often described as a borderless crime because there is not a geographical restriction on where offenders may try to target their victims. In this case, Facebook deactivated the online accounts of the initial suspects. But there were indications that, within hours, the groups were reforming again under new accounts.”

Investigators from CEOP infiltrated the network that Green had set up. They discovered that when people had been able to prove they were trustworthy to him, often by uploading their own images of child abuse, Green would allow them to have access to the next group. Each group contained more extreme images of films of children being sexually abused.

Some 724 of the images were what are known as ‘level five’, which is the most severe classification of child abuse images.

“This network was made up of people who share an interest in viewing extremely disturbing images of children suffering horrific abuse. This operation should send a clear message to people who think the online environment offers them anonymity,” said Jim Gamble, chief executive of CEOP.

He reminded parents that CEOP has an application which can be downloaded to Facebook which enables users to get help or advice if they are concerned about the behaviour of someone on the site.