Nearly 400 children rescued and 348 adults arrested in Canadian child pornography bust
By Daniella Silva, NBC News
Nearly
400 children have been rescued and 348 adults arrested following an
expansive and “extraordinary” international child pornography
investigation, Canadian police announced Thursday.
The
three-year project, named Project Spade, began when undercover officers
with the Toronto Police Service Child Exploitation service made contact
with a Toronto man allegedly sharing “very graphic images” of child
sexual abuse in Oct. 2010, Toronto Police Service Chief William Blair
said at a press conference on Thursday.
Police
said their investigation revealed an entire child movie production and
distribution company in Toronto operating via the web site
azovfilms.com.
The site was run by 42-year
old Brian Way, according to police, and sold and distributed images of
child exploitation to people across the world.
Inspector
Joanna Beaven-Desjardins, head of Toronto’s Sex Crimes Unit, said they
enlisted the help of the United States Postal Inspection Service since
many of the videos were being exported to the U.S. and began a joint
investigation.
After a seven-month long
investigation, officers executed search warrants across the city of
Toronto including at the business, located in the city’s West End.
Investigators
catalogued hundreds of thousands of images and videos of “horrific
sexual acts against very young children, some of the worst they have
ever viewed,” Inspector Beaven-Desjardins said at the press conference.
Police
seized over 45 terabytes of data from the $4-million business that
distributed to over 50 counties including Australia, Spain, Mexico,
Sweden and Greece.
As a result of the
investigation thus far, 50 people were arrested in Ontario, 58 in the
rest of Canada, 76 in the United States, and 164 internationally.
What
was most alarming, Inspector Beaven-Desjardins said, was that many of
the arrests were of people who worked with or closely interacted with
children.
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Among
those arrested were 40 school teachers, nine doctors and nurses, six
law enforcement personnel, nine pastors and priests and three foster
parents, she said.
Citing a particularly
egregious example, she said police found over 350,000 images and over
9,000 videos of child sexual abuse in the home of a retired Canadian
school teacher. Some of the images were of children known to the man and
he was also charged with sexually abusing a child relative.
The
inspector said an indispensable aspect to the success of the operation
and the rescue of 386 children from child exploitation was the expansive
cooperation between Toronto police and organizations worldwide.
“[This]
confirms that when we work together regardless of the borders that
divide us we can successfully take down those who not only prey on our
most vulnerable but also profit from it,” she said.
Police said the children were "rescued from child exploitation" but did not give more details.
Way was charged with 24 counts, including possession of, distribution of, and importing and exporting child pornography.
The investigation is ongoing and more arrests could be made, police said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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