Online sex offenders tracked

[Al-khiyal]

Postman from Cornwall admits child sex abuse charges

May 28, 2010 -- A postman from Cornwall has admitted using social networking sites to abuse hundreds of children over a five-year period. Michael Williams, admitted at Truro Crown Court to 27 charges of inciting sexual activity, grooming and distributing indecent images. He also admitted voyeurism and possessing indecent images. Williams, 28, of Penryn, approached children on Facebook and Bebo. After the case, police officers said they feared many more youngsters may have been abused by Williams because his job and his his use of the internet meant he had approached hundreds of children. Speaking after the court hearing, Detective Inspector Simon Snell, from Devon and Cornwall Police, said: "He is a predatory, manipulative and prolific offender. The majority of offending has taken place on the internet, specifically on social network sites including Facebook and Bebo. I hope the victims and families directly affected will be able to move on and, in particular, the victims will be able to get on with their lives."

Williams worked as a postman in Penryn, where he was regarded as cheerful and helpful. He befriended many people on his rounds - including youngsters. But he would also pursue the children using social networking sites - sometimes using false names and posing as a teenager. After grooming some of the victims, he would encourage them to perform sexual acts over the internet. At the hearing, the defendant also asked for four similar offences to be taken into consideration by the court.

The charges he admitted included:

• Three counts of grooming children over the internet

• Eight counts of sexual activity with a child aged between 13 and 15

• Nine counts of causing or inciting a child over 13 to engage in sexual activity

• Four counts of causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity

• One count of voyeurism

• Two counts of making or possessing indecent images

The police thanked the Penryn and Falmouth community where Williams grew up and went to school and confirmed that none of the offences took place at either of his former schools. Williams was also former secretary of Falmouth Town Football Club. Detective Inspector Snell said: "Falmouth Town Football Club has fully co-operated with the inquiry. They acted diligently by suspending Williams from his footballing commitments as soon as they became aware of the circumstances." Sentencing of Williams, from Tresooth Lane, has been adjourned for three months for the preparation of psychiatric reports.

[Al-khiyal]

Paedo postie admits charges

May 28, 2010 -- Police slammed Facebook over security failures today after a paedophile postman used the site to groom up to 1,000 children - scores of whom he sexually abused. Vile Michael Williams - who kept cuttings about Soham killer Ian Huntley - told cops he was about to escalate his horrific offending when they caught him. The 'predatory and manipulative' monster created different profiles to target youngsters he met on his round, doing school runs as taxi driver and as the secretary of a football club. He dyed his hair different colours to hide his identity and tricked his victims into performing sex acts on a webcam or meeting him so he could sexually assault them. Cops said the vile bisexual invented at least eight fake profiles, pretending to be teenage boys and a girl called 'Gorgeous Charlie' to lure children aged 11 to 16. One included photos of himself as a child meeting Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson and stars including Ryan Giggs and Peter Schmeichel - although it is not known if he used the images to snare children.

Williams, 28, used Facebook, Bebo and MSN messenger to chat to multiple victims at once and convinced many to meet him in parks, beaches and at his home where he abused them. He was remanded in custody for sentencing yesterday after admitting 27 specimen charges at Truro Crown Court, including grooming, sexual activity with a child and inciting children to engage in sexual activity. But he also asked for a sickening 460 other offences to be taken into consideration - including voyeurism, sexual assault and child porn. Detectives have identified around 500 victims he groomed or abused but believe there could be up to 1,000 in total because hundreds are too scared to come forward.

Officers say many of the incidents could have been avoided if Facebook had a ''panic button'' which would allow youngsters to alert authorities if they thought they were being groomed. Facebook had refused to install the function for years, claiming it would make the site appear 'dangerous'. But in an apparent U-turn this week they announced it is in talks with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) centre to create it. Detective Inspector Simon Snell criticised Facebook - and said it could have spared many of Williams' victims. He said: ''Williams is a predatory and manipulative paedophile and the children who have been tricked into having sexual activity with him are horrified and distraught. But some simple safety procedures could have stopped him. A panic button is a visible deterrent which would provide reassurance to Facebook users. It is something a child can use there and then. Facebook may believe it would make the site appear dangerous, but, in fact, that button would be a very important safeguard. There is a real chance that some of Williams' victims would have pressed the panic button, which would have immediately informed CEOP, who would have then informed us." He added: ''The internet allowed this offender to contact as many people as he desired. We are unclear of the exact figure of how many children he met through social networking sites but we believe it may be up to a thousand.''

Williams, of Penryn, Cornwall, started his offending in 2005 when he began grooming kids he met during his postal rounds, taxi routes and at Falmouth Town Football Club. He was working at the club as a secretary and also set up video cameras in the showers where he filmed adults between the ages of 18 and 25. He began to dye his hair green and red and adopt different hair styles to set up a series of Facebook profiles. The physical assaults later took place when he met children at his flat and other locations including a park and a beach. One charge of voyeurism he admitted relates to various incidents where he filmed young children as they got dressed and undressed on a beach in Falmouth, Cornwall. He was arrested in November 2009 when various children came forward to police saying they had been assaulted. Cops searched his flat and found that Williams had been using the internet to persuade children to perform sex acts on themselves on a web cam, which he then recorded. There were 1,342 indecent images of children, 20 videos featuring children he met on the internet and 800 carefully archived 'chat logs'. He used Facebook for the majority of his grooming and had aliases including a young boy called 'James' and a teenage girl called 'Gorgeous Charlie'. Williams also had contact with many children on MSN Messenger and he would keep several windows open on his screen so he could groom ''multiple victims'' at once.

DI Snell added: ''Williams portrayed himself as at least eight different people, including a young boy, a teenage boy and a female teenager. He also changed his hair colour on a weekly basis to conduct his grooming. He used various colours and mohican style cuts. There appears to be a great deal of fantasy about his criminal activity. He had several press cuttings in his flat from high profile cases, including the Ian Huntley case. He is a predatory paedophile who was caught before his offending escalated. In interview he made a comment that indicated to us that his criminal activities would have escalated.'' Police say he mainly targeted children who he had got to know in his local area but also groomed kids from other areas of the country, including the north and the south east. DI Snell added: ''Some of his young victims decided not to speak to police, but we believe there could be hundreds more due to his prolific internet activity. His family are very nice people, who have been supportive of our investigation, and are distraught about what has happened.''

Karen Dale, manager of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Safeguarding Children Board, said 76 per cent of children aged between 12 and 16-years-old have a Facebook profile. She said: ''Internet safety is an issue some parents don't give a lot of thought to. But the internet can be exploited and young children exploited. It is important to know who your children are talking to and how much information they are giving out about themselves.''

Earlier this year calls for Facebook to place a panic button on its pages received the support of 44 police chiefs in England, Wales and Scotland. It followed the murder of 17-year-old student Ashleigh Hall in County Durham last October by Peter Chapman, a man she met via Facebook. Chapman, 33, was jailed for at least 35 years after he raped and suffocated the teenager and dumped her body in a field near Sedgefield. Clicking on the panic button alerts Ceop and takes people to a site that details how to handle cyberbullying, hacking, viruses, distressing material and inappropriate sexual behaviour. Speaking earlier this month, Richard Allan, Facebook's head of policy in Europe, said the social networking site and Ceop had a ''common agenda'' on child safety on the internet. He said: ''There are some issues around the design. To change a website fundamentally takes some time to work through." Williams will be sentenced in three months time after psychiatric reports are prepared. Earlier this week Facebook chief executive and founder Mark Zuckerberg vowed that the company would add privacy controls that are simpler to use 'as soon as possible'.

[Al-khiyal]

Global paedophile network smashed

March 16, 2011 -- Hundreds of children – including 60 in the UK – at "significant risk" of abuse from named paedophiles have been removed from immediate danger after British police helped destroy what they believe is the largest online paedophile network in the world. The three-year operation, which exposed more than 70,000 members across the UK, U.S., New Zealand, Australia and Thailand, where some of the first arrests were made, led to 184 arrests internationally, 121 of them in Britain. The investigation, Operation Rescue, was led by the UK's national centre for child protection, joined by the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), New Zealand police, Europol, the Zaanstreek-Waterland police in the Netherlands and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It identified 670 suspects and 230 abused or at-risk children globally.

Police were unable to say how many children had been taken into care as a result of the investigation. One suspect, a scout master whose case is still pending, was arrested 24 hours before he took part in a camp where he was planning to abuse a named boy in his care. Offenders were tracked to many other countries including Italy, Spain and Thailand. Details were revealed at a press conference in the Hague, the Netherlands, where the website's server was based. The network hid behind boylover.net, a legal forum which attempted to function covertly by operating as a discussion-only forum where members could share their sexual interest in young boys without committing any offence. But members, having made contact, would then move to more private channels such as email to exchange and share images of children being abused.

In the UK, the 240 suspects included police officers, teachers and youth leaders. One of the UK suspects was a woman. To date, 33 have been convicted, including John McMurdo, 36, a scout leader from Plymouth, who was jailed in January last year after admitting possessing and distributing child pornography, and Lee Palmer, who was sentenced to six years in prison in March 2010 after pleading guilty to the sexual abuse of two boys, aged two and nine. Police discovered more than 60,000 indecent images on his computer. Peter Davies, the UK police chief who leads the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) and is also the UK's lead for child protection, said: "The scale and success of Operation Rescue has broken new ground. Not only is it one of the largest operations of its kind to date – and the biggest operation we have led – it also demonstrates the impact of international law enforcement agencies working together with one single objective: to safeguard children and bring offenders to justice. That drive has been the hallmark of all the forces and teams involved. What we show today is that while these offenders felt anonymous in some way because they were using the internet to communicate, the technology was actually being used against them. Everything they did online, everyone they talked to or anything they shared could, and was, tracked by following the digital footprint."

Davies said all 230 children identified were at significant risk from named offenders but it was impossible to count how many had been rescued from future abuse "over the lifetime of these offenders". "There are occasions when the threat is so close that the only option is to take these children into care, but the risk can come from babysitters or neighbours. Most of them are individuals but there may be clusters." He said one of the key messages from this operation is that the internet is not a haven. "My advice to young people is to think carefully when they go on the internet because they don't necessarily know who they are speaking to – and nor did some of these offenders, who found they were actually making contact with members of our international police team."

The founder and owner of the website, Amir Ish-Hurwitz, 37, from the Netherlands, was jailed by a Dutch court on Wednesday, triggering the decision to publicise the scale of the police operation. The site was closed down on the 25 November 2009. "We could have publicised this earlier, or later, but once the website owner was in court it was obvious that information would emerge," said a Dutch police spokesman. Operation Rescue began in 2007, after Ceop and AFP independently found boylover.net. Three detectives then posed as members to identify those who posed the biggest risk to children. The breakthrough came when officers were able to access and take over the account of the only UK administrator, based in Durham, and were able to access the personal details, including date of birth, occupation and country of residents of members. "We were amazed that they had registered their true occupations" said Kelvin Lay, a senior investigating officer and one of the three responsible for infiltrating the site.

Lay and the other officers identified those who had an occupation or hobby that put them in contact with children as grade A. He said: "We painstakingly went through every post and message to identify whether they were physically abusing children or had access to children." This process led to the 121 arrests. The Europol director, Rob Wainwright, described the results of the investigation as "phenomenal" and praised analysts at Europol's headquarters for infiltrating the sophisticated computer codes designed to cover the tracks of those using the online forum to meet or exchange illegal images of children. He said: "The safeguarding of so many vulnerable children is particularly rewarding." He added that Europol had so far issued more than 4,000 intelligence reports to police authorities in more than 30 countries, which had led to the arrest of suspects and the identification of abused children. The website, boylover.net, had attracted a cross-section of professional workers including teachers, taxi drivers and IT consultants, he said. As part of the operation, Ceop provided intelligence to the Royal Thai Police in February 2008 about British nationals suspected of committing child sexual abuse in their jurisdiction. This led to Operation Naga in November 2008, during which four suspects were arrested, according to Ceop. The ages of suspects arrested in the UK range from 17 to 82.

[Al-khiyal]

Former UN inspector arrested in 'sex sting'

Ritter convicted in online sex case

April 15, 2011 -- A former top United Nations weapons inspector caught in an online sex sting was convicted in the US late yesterday for exchanging explicit messages with who he thought was a 15-year-old girl in a chatroom and then performing a sex act on himself. Scott Ritter (49) was in fact exchanging the messages with a detective posing as the underage girl. Neither Ritter, who will be sentenced next month, nor his lawyer, commented outside court in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Ritter, one of the UN’s chief weapons inspectors in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, resigned after accusing the U.S. and the UN of failing to get tough with Saddam Hussein. He later said that Iraq had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction and became a vocal critic of the U.S. invasion. The jury in his trial deliberated two days before finding Ritter guilty of six of the seven charges against him. One was a misdemeanor, indecent exposure, and the rest were felonies, including three charges of unlawful conduct with a minor, criminal attempt to corrupt a minor and criminal use of a communications device. Each of the five felony charges carries a maximum penalty of seven years in prison. No sentencing date was set and Ritter remains free on $25,000 bail. Assistant district attorney Michael Rakaczewski said Ritter was convicted "by his own actions and by his own words on the stand." At one point during the trial, the jury watched a graphic video recording of a nude Ritter performing a sexual act captured on his computer web camera for young "Emily." Posing as "Emily," Detective Ryan Venneman twice gave her age as 15. The chat and video occurred in February of 2009. Ritter testified at the trial and part of his defense was that he did not believe he was really talking to a 15-year-old, but instead an adult pretending to be a minor. Ritter's wife, who testified in his defense, and twin daughters, Victoria and Patricia (18) attended the trial at Monroe County Common Pleas Court in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.