Three jailed for distributing indecent images of children worldwide after 'groundbreaking' police operation
- guardian.co.uk,
- Article history
The Lincolnshire paedophile ring: (clockwise from top left) Ian Frost, Paul Rowland, Ian Sambridge and Paul Frost. Photograph: PA
Three men were jailed on Monday after they admitted running an international paedophile ring that distributed millions of indecent images and films of children to subscribers in more than 40 countries.
Ian Frost, 35, and his civil partner Paul Rowland, 34, and Frost's brother Paul, 37, admitted various charges of making, distributing and possessing indecent images of children. It is the first case of its kind in England and Wales in which individual defendants were prosecuted for distributing such images through news servers.
Lincolnshire police said as a result of their operation, 132 children in the UK had been given protection and a number of paedophiles removed from positions of trust, including teachers, doctors, youth workers and police officers.
Mr Justice Calvert-Smith told Nottingham crown court that Ian Frost was the "leading light, who devised the scheme and was the main beneficiary". He and Rowland were jailed for 33 months.
The group was involved in running illegal uncensored internet news groups which circulated images and films to 46 countries across the globe, Lincolnshire police said. The largest number of subscribers had been based in the US.
The three men all pleaded guilty to distributing indecent images of children while Rowland admitted distributing, making and possessing indecent images of children. The judge commended the complex investigation by police and law enforcement agencies, describing it as "painstaking and groundbreaking".
Paul Frost, from Sheffield, was jailed for 15 months while a fourth man, 32-year-old Ian Sambridge, of St Albans, Hertfordshire, who admitted distributing indecent images of children, was given a 12-month sentence suspended for two years and 240 hours of community service.
The judge told them: "It is astonishing that four such people, well-educated, should choose to embark on the course that they did. It's equally astonishing that in the seven-year investigation hardly a word of regret has fallen from the lips of any defendant for the victims depicted in their news groups."
The size and scale of the online international operation carried out by the men shocked police, a senior officer said.
Detective Superintendent Paul Gibson, who led the inquiry, said that when officers from the Lincolnshire force walked into Ian Frost's living room and found the piece of computer equipment used to run the news servers, they knew specialists would be needed for forensic examination.
The technically intricate news service was being operated from Martin Dales, a small hamlet near Woodhall Spa, north of Boston.
The judge noted that "never once did the defendants pause to reflect that they were contributing significantly to the international market and to the abuse of children, and even if that did not concern them they did not consider that they were at risk of criminal prosecution". The criminal operation spanned seven years and netted the group around £2.2m, although none appeared to have extravagant lifestyles.
Officers first received intelligence from German police in November 2005 that Ian Frost was running a news service that had an association with indecent images of children.
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