Child Porn Racket: 386 Rescued, 348 Arrested by Toronto Police
Toronto police were able to rescue 386 child porn victims as a part of Project Spade.
According to the Toronto police, 348 people were arrested from all over the world. The intense operation worldwide is claimed to be one of the biggest child porn busts ever achieved. From Canada, 108 people were arrested, 50 from Ontario and 58 from other parts of the country. Actors, newspaper editors, policemen, doctors and teachers are among the arrested, police say.
The main lead was Brian Way, a Toronto man who had been running a company for the last 8 years. He had been distributing videos related to child pornography since 2005. The police have held him responsible for instructing people worldwide how to create porn videos, featuring children aged 5 to 12, The Globe and Mail reports. The videos were made to cater the demands of customers from all over the globe including countries like Canada, Australia, Spain, Germany, Mexico and the United States.
The Toronto-based porn company is called Azov Films which allegedly streamed videos online and put mail-order DVDs on sale. The porn videos showed naked children from Ukraine, Romania and Germany. The videos were marketed as naturist movie. It was also claimed that the videos were legal in the United States and Canada.
The customers from all over the world have one thing in common, according to the police. All of them paid to Mr Way, 41, for providing explicit children porn videos. According to the Finch Avenue reports, Mr Way has been charged as the head of a 'criminal' gang as his company is termed as a criminal organisation. He was caught during an undercover operation in May 2011. His partners in crime are his mother Sandra Waslov and Markus Rudolph Roth, a videographer from Germany.
The Criminal Code in Canada calls it child pornography when the genitals of a minor are shown for a sexual motif. The Canadian police confirmed that they consulted with legal experts regarding the materials sold by the company. Those can legally be termed as child porn, they said. The claims of those being 'naturalist' videos have been strongly refuted.