Philippe Devos

Man, 24, arrested in Net porn case Police say images distributed via Web site

Toronto police have arrested a man for allegedly recording sexually explicit images of teenage girls and distributing them over the Internet.

Police said they discovered a Web site on the Internet where child pornography was being distributed, "particularly sexual activity of adolescent female girls," said Detective Sergeant Chris Hobson of the Toronto police force's morality squad.

Hobson said a man obtained the sexual services of girls between the ages of 14 and 16, which he filmed, either directly or surreptitiously.

The images were distributed on the Internet for a fee and users were billed by a company called S and M Communications, police said.

Alerted police

Around the same time, the parents of a Toronto girl alerted police at 32 Division on Ellerslie Ave. after someone took inappropriate pictures of their daughter.

Toronto police raided an apartment in the Don Mills Rd. and Sheppard Ave E. area on Aug. 13 after about two month of investigation.

They seized video and camera equipment, several videotapes and computer equipment that had explicit images of children as young as 5 stored in its memory.

Appears today

Meanwhile, one of the men arrested last week in a huge child-porn sting operation committed suicide in his Connecticut apartment on Tuesday.

Police believed the 35-year-old microbiologist was part of the Wonderland Club, an international ring of child pornographers who made and shared images of sex acts with children as young as 2 years.

He was among 46 people arrested in the United States, Europe and Australia after police made raids in 12 countries on 100 suspected members of the club. Although no arrests were made in Canada, police here are still investigating.