MORE than 1,200 teachers, doctors, care workers and policemen have been arrested across the United Kingdom in raids against paedophiles who had used an American internet service.

Forty children have been taken into care because they have been abused or there are fears that they might be at risk from parents or professional workers.

Detectives taking part in the national police inquiry, code-named Operation Ore, have charged ten men with abuse, including a father of three children accused of assaulting one child. Police found that he had also taken Polaroid pictures of the child.

Fifty police have been arrested during raids. They are junior or middle-ranking officers and eight have been charged. Others are on bail.

The extent of Operation Ore’s investigations was explained yesterday as 250 detectives from Scotland Yard launched the biggest series of raids in the inquiry at addresses across London. Thirty-four men were arrested during searches in 45 homes. Scotland Yard has already arrested another 65 suspects during raids in recent weeks.

Operation Ore, the largest paedophile investigation to be mounted in Britain, began after the US Postal Service uncovered a subscriber website for paedophiles being operated in Texas by a couple. The American investigators found details of 75,000 subscribers around the world and passed on 7,000 credit card references to British police.

The British suspects are all repeat users of the website and lists of their names have been passed to the 52 forces where they live. Forces began operations more than six months ago when the names were passed to chief constables from the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the National Crime Squad.

The names — 99.9 per cent are men — are split into three categories according to criteria including their access to children or any criminal record for child sex crimes. The 1,300 already arrested represent 90 per cent of the names in the two most sensitive groups.

London has a list of 1,100 suspects. There are 700 in Scotland, 279 in Cambridgeshire, 200 in Kent and another 200 in Surrey.

Suspects already arrested include magistrates, two hospital consultants, a senior classics master at a public school, and a former deputy headmaster.

One man arrested in London last week had 12 computers, 2,530 CDs, 518 floppy discs, 55 videos and 99 films, all of which are now being scanned by police for possible child pornography.

Jim Gamble, an Assistant Chief Constable in the National Crime Squad overseeing the national investigations, said yesterday that the suspects came from a wide range of economic and social backgrounds.

“They come from right across the social spectrum,” he said. The children in the internet pictures they accessed included babies. Thirteen-hundred warrants have been served and more than 1,200 suspects arrested.

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