600 arrests in child abuse investigation on industrial scale

More than 660 suspected paedophiles have arrested in the UK’s largest ever child abuse cyber crime operation.

They include doctors, teachers, care workers, scout leaders and former police officers from across the UK.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) says more than 400 children have been, as they put it, safeguarded as a result.

The six-month operation on what police describe as the dark side of the internet, targeted those downloading and distributing indecent images.

A 2012 risk assessment by CEOP estimated there 50,000 suspected paedophiles in the UK. Of those arrested, only 29 were registered sex offenders.

NCA deputy director general Phil Gormley said this is about spotting risk in volume and industrialising an approach to investigating this type of criminality – what he described as an “unprecedented intelligence effort”, but he refused to reveal any details of the tactics of techniques used to track suspects.

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