Doubts cast over success of child porn inquiry

Key points

• Expert says flawed paedophilia investigation led to 33 suicides

• Claims that targets always knew they were visiting child porn sites criticised

• Police hail success of raids with 100 convictions and 120 children rescued

Key quote

"The success of Operation Ore is that a large number of people were properly convicted. But the disaster is the lack of judgment and excess of zeal in the way the police hounded the innocent. It has become a witchhunt" - Duncan Campbell, computer expert

Story in full MORE than 100 paedophiles in Scotland have been convicted following the biggest internet porn investigation ever conducted by police, senior officers have revealed.

With all but one of the 420 cases investigated by Scotland's eight forces under Operation Ore dealt with, 102 people have been convicted of having pornographic images of children.

And the National Crime Squad yesterday revealed that 120 children across the UK have been rescued from abuse as a result of the crackdown.

But critics point to the apparently low conviction rate compared to the number of cases investigated and claim there has been a human cost to the international operation as a result of flaws in the evidence which led to hundreds of innocent people being subjected to intensive police investigations, some lasting more than a year.

Others say more than 33 Britons have committed suicide after being targeted by police since the operation was launched three years ago.

Meanwhile, The Scotsman has learned that one Scottish force is being sued by a man who was investigated. The man, from Glasgow, was suspended from his job for 14 months after police raided his flat and seized his computer equipment. He was eventually cleared but says the ordeal drove him to brink of suicide.

Operation Ore was launched three years ago after 7,200 names were supplied to British police by their US counterparts.

The men on the list were accused of having paid for child porn through a Texas-based website called Landslide. The most high-profile name was rock star Pete Townshend, who was later absolved.

Scottish police say around 420 names of people whose credit card details appeared on Landslide were passed to them by the National Crime Squad. Around 250 homes were searched, more than 500 computers and accessories seized and 120 arrests made.

As the list was three years old, some suspects had died or left the country. Many other investigations reached a dead end because the time delay meant police were unable to find evidence of child images as suspects had changed their computer.

A spokeswoman for Strathclyde Police said 96 suspects were identified and 22 people convicted.

Lothian and Borders Police identified 82 suspects, 26 of whom were found guilty. Grampian Police carried out 35 investigations and 15 people were convicted. In Tayside, 15 investigations were carried out, leading to eight convictions.

Central Scotland Police undertook 12 investigations which led to seven convictions. In Fife, 29 people were targeted leading to eight convictions with one case pending. Northern Constabulary identified 24 suspects of whom 13 were found guilty. In Dumfries and Galloway, seven targets were identified and three convictions secured.

Senior officers say the operation has been a success, but one expert witness has described it as a "witch-hunt" founded on flawed evidence.

Duncan Campbell, who has worked as a computer expert in several Operation Ore cases, has rubbished claims by American law enforcers that everyone who went to Landslide - which allowed access to 400 adult sites - always saw the front-page screen banner "Click Here [for] Child Porn".

He claims that the "child porn" banner was in fact a temporary advertisement for another site. That, he says, led police to swoop on many hundreds of people across the UK who had accessed legal adult sites only. Mr Campbell told The Scotsman: "I have been instructed by more than ten Operation Ore defendants and every one of them, including those completely unjustly accused, contemplated taking their own lives.

"That is the degree of the psychological effect of being treated in the way Ore defendants were treated.

"The success of Operation Ore is that a large number of people were properly convicted. But the disaster is the lack of judgment and excess of zeal in the way the police hounded the innocent. It has become a witchhunt." Mr Campbell said the accusations have led to 33 suicides.

Jim Gamble, deputy director- general of the National Crime Squad, yesterday admitted there were "difficulties" in the early stages - but denied police had taken a "production line" approach to investigations.

"Every case has been investigated on its own merits. Some people say there has been a production line approach to Operation Ore, but that isn't the case.

"Operation Ore came to us in massive numbers. There were over 7,000 people suspected of going on the Landslide site and each one of those had to be investigated," Mr Gamble said.

"With these sorts of allegations, it's always going to be difficult. Each police force took extremely seriously the issues in respect of the stigma attached to this type of investigation.

"It takes months upon months sometimes to examine all the computer hardware involved."

Mr Gamble said he sympathised with innocent people who suffered the stigma of being a suspect, but added: "We've now up to 120 children who have been rescued from abuse and violence as a result of Operation Ore. What would people be saying if we hadn't investigated these cases?"

Deputy Chief Constable Bob Ovens, spokesman on sex offenders for the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, said the operation was necessary to clamp down on the worldwide abuse of children.

He said: "This is about protecting children not only in Scotland and the UK but across the world. The operation has heightened awareness of the abuse of children and also uncovered a number of child protection issues.

"People who create these images are causing huge abuse to children."

'I lost my home, my marriage collapsed - I considered suicide'

WHEN David was told that his credit card had been used to access a child-porn website, his whole world collapsed.

That was back in December 2002, but the 41-year-old, from Glasgow, recalls the moment as if it was yesterday.

"I was summoned to my boss's office, where two police officers were waiting to inform me that I was accused of accessing an internet site. At first they wouldn't tell me which site," said David, who works in IT.

"I was escorted from my workplace by four Strathclyde police officers and taken to my home address, where another three or four cars full of police were waiting. They searched my home, every room, and took my computer and peripherals.

"I was then taken to a police station and questioned for three hours about child pornography - something I knew nothing about. They told me my credit card had been used on two occasions to subscribe to Landslide, which provides access to thousands of adult porn sites. They said it meant I had been looking at child pornography."

David, who did not wish to reveal his surname because of the stigma attached to the allegations, said he was not charged, but was subjected to a 14-month investigation. The inquiry was eventually dropped, but he says the stress led to the breakup of his marriage.

He has now become the first Operation Ore suspect in Scotland, and possibly the UK, to sue a police force for suffering caused by the investigation.

He said: "They had my computer and they wanted to look at the hard drive.

"I was suspended from my job as I was subject to a criminal investigation. I had to wait 14 months before the police eventually told me they had found nothing illegal.

"The police showed me a document all about me. It had details of credit card transactions, my name, address, registration of car and a photograph of this internet page that said 'click here for child porn'. I had never seen this before in my life."

He added: "My work held their own internal investigation after the police had finished theirs. The strain it placed me under was unbelievable.

"My marriage collapsed, I lost my home and at one stage I even contemplated suicide.

"All my neighbours would have seen the police arriving at my door. They never said anything to my face, but the whispers would probably have been going round."

And David warned: "I know there are a lot more people out there whose lives are also in tatters because of this."

Cameron Fyfe, David's lawyer, said: "My client had a very good job, but his life was pretty much ruined when he was accused of downloading child porn."