Fed: NSW police officer and VIC QC caught in porn network
11 Dec 2008 12:52 PM
CANBERRA, Dec 11 AAP - A NSW police officer and a retired Victorian QC are among those arrested as part of a 12-month investigation into a child pornography ring.
Police described some of the images seized during the investigation as the worst they'd ever seen.
The investigation, dubbed Operation Resistance, resulted in the arrests of 22 men across NSW, Victoria and Queensland.
Those arrested were among 200 people from 70 countries named as persons of interest following an investigation by Brazilian authorities, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) said.
More than 15,000 videos and 500,000 images of child abuse were seized by the AFP's Child Protection Operations Team during the investigation.
The images and videos, shared between members of peer-to-peer network, included the sexual abuse of children as young as 12 months old.
AFP acting deputy commissioner of operations Andrew Colvin said two children in NSW had been removed from contact with alleged offenders.
"The videos seized as part of this operation have to be among the worst we have seen," Mr Colvin said.
"Some depicted sexual abuse of children lasting more than two hours."
Mr Colvin said those arrested were from a range of employment backgrounds and included a QC, a childcare worker and a NSW police officer.
The matter involving the police officer is before the courts.
"I believe he may be back at court this week, but I don't think it would be appropriate for me to go into any detail at this stage," Mr Colvin said.
It was unclear as to whether any of the children in the videos or images were Australian, he said.
"At this stage those inquiries are still ongoing.
"In this case we haven't located any children that were depicted in these videos or these images in Australia."
Further arrests were likely over the next couple of days, he said.
