25 Canadians charged in global sex exploitation case

TORONTO – A total of 218 charges of child sex exploitation have been laid against 57 people, including 25 Canadians, the Toronto Police Service said Wednesday.

Det. Paul Krawczyk, of the force’s sex crimes unit, told a news conference the charges were laid worldwide and involve children as young as four.

Both boys and girls were involved, he said, and the number of images ranges from "the tens of thousands if not millions."

In total, 25 children have been rescued: 10 in the United States, 12 in Canada, and three in Europe.

In November 2009 officers from the child exploitation section of the Toronto Police Service launched – in partnership with U.S. authorities, 13 Canadian police services and international police services – an international investigation into the online trading of child sexual abuse images and videos.

Dubbed Project Sanctuary, the investigation began when an undercover officer made contact with a man who was trading child sexual abuse images and videos over the Internet, police said in a news release.

The information was forwarded to the local law enforcement agency and a 50-year-old man was arrested, charged and has been convicted.

Undercover officers then spent the next year infiltrating a worldwide network of men who were allegedly trading child sexual abuse images and videos and, in some cases, creating these images by allegedly abusing children, police said.

The arrests were made as far back as November 2009 and as recently as this month.

According to police: in the United States 26 men face 56 charges; in Canada 25 men face 131 charges and in Europe, six men face 31 charges.

The first arrest was made by local police in Conception Bay South, Newfoundland, near St. John’s, Krawczyk said.

"You can’t begin to describe what these children go through," he said, adding police have to work as hard as they can to track down the people who think it is appropriate to exploit them.

"I can tell you that some of the (images of) victims we saw early in this investigation we continued to see in the latter stages of the investigation."

And because the images are still available on the Internet, the children continue to be exploited every single day, he said.