Dark reach of global child sex ring uncovered in UK had spread from US to Philippines
April 7, 2014 ·
Police searched the home of British paedophile Timothy Ford after receiving a tip off
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The previous 10 years had not been good for Timothy Ford, the man who lived alone in the small house in a tidy street in the Northamptonshire town of Kettering. It had started with a second jail sentence for possessing indecent images of children. After his release, he was hit by a bus, left paralysed from the waist down, and confined to a wheelchair. He was clearly struggling to look after himself.
Ford spent most of his time on his computer. That was what the police were looking for when they came knocking with a search warrant, after receiving a tip that he had been online talking to people who may have shared his obsession for children. What they found on the computer in June 2011 led to a dogged hunt which spanned continents, and delved into the darkest recesses of the internet.
It takes a long time to unravel the secrets of a computer, even one where little obvious attempt has been made to hide what was on it. The examination of Ford’s revealed 600 images of children, both stills and videos. Some included adults conducting and orchestrating sexual acts.
It was clear that some of the children were foreign. Chat logs and emails talked of sending 2,000 to Carlos and 400 to Peter, although the currency was not specified. On some of the videos, the tapping of the keyboard could be heard in the background.
“It was clear he was bartering with older children and parents to get them to commit sexual acts that he could watch with a webcam,” said Detective Sergeant Gan Thayanithy, from Northamptonshire police. “He’d say: ‘I want you to do this,’ which they would do after negotiations. This is how we first realised that it was a much bigger investigation than indecent images of children.”
The force started to work with internet service providers to try to identify other people that Ford was in contact with, as he shared the images with paedophiles in the UK and abroad. Police retrieved his conversations with Porkchop91, aka Thomas Owen, a 34-year-old fellow paedophile from the Wirral.
Ford hello my friend, how are you?
Owen very good.
Ford what ages do you like?
Owen i love all boys… but especially 6-12… have you been lucky enough to have fun with boys in the flesh.
Ford not in this country. i am looking at the Philippines. i know a whole family of them ;-).
Owen can i ask what the boys you sponsor send you?
Ford i get some shows over the net.
Owen live shows?
Ford yes.
Owen awww that sounds great.
Ford, now aged 53, was on bail as police slowly built their case. Police knocked on his door again in April the following year to once more pick their way through the sodden papers and rubbish. Underneath the bed, they found a hidden laptop.
It was, according to detectives, a “goldmine” of information. Back at the lab, it revealed that Ford had spent his months on bail continuing to view child abuse images and plotting his escape to a new life abroad.
Documents on the laptop revealed that he was planning to buy land and build an “internet café” in Angeles City in the Philippines, a city described by local authorities as a hotbed for trafficked young women and children.
In July 2012, Special Agent Hoots Johnson (not his real name) was sitting at his desk at the offices of the Homeland Security Investigations team in Missouri when an advert on the online classified website Craigslist caught his eye, offering photography services from the Philippines.
Johnson, an expert in undercover operations and a 25-year crime-fighting veteran, guessed from the language that it was something far more sinister. He got in contact and received a swift response from a fellow American.
The agent clearly put the man at his ease because within 24 hours, Kenneth Stokes, now aged 69, allegedly sent through the first child abuse images. He had claimed that he had married a Filipino woman so he could get close to her daughter, according to the US authorities.
The agent kept reeling him in. Sixteen days later, Johnson received more images and a process was started quietly to revoke his passport to allow him to be brought back to the US for trial. But how to find him? Where Stokes lived, complaints inevitably followed. So he was constantly on the move. It would be months before they could track him down.
Police searched the home of British paedophile Timothy Ford after receiving a tip off Police searched the home of British paedophile Timothy Ford after receiving a tip off
It was becoming apparent to the investigators that Ford was the linchpin of a loosely-connected international operation organised and run by like-minded paedophiles who had met through websites and chatrooms. The websites were thinly-disguised centres for paedophiles but were heavily moderated to avoid the attentions of the law. Through coded conversations and hints, users made their contacts and then went into private conversations.
CEOP senior investigator Kelvin Lay had previously been involved in a three-year investigation to infiltrate one such website – boylover.net – which had some 70,000 members and was taken down after police tracked down the owner of the site to Holland.
Now following the Ford leads, he engaged in the painstaking work to trace the victims in the Philippines and the men that had abused them – both online and in person. “Most adults tend to put pictures with their children on social networking sites and we were able to pair up and identify them,” said Lay. They were left with some others who they could not identify. “It was obviously children who lived in the vicinity.”
Other computers were also being scrutinised as the network expanded, suspects were arrested and the equipment seized. Thomas Owen had been arrested by Merseyside police and was found to have nearly four million indecent images on his computer. Those further tests revealed that he had been in contact for some months with the American, Kenneth Stokes, according to police.
When Kelvin Lay finally flew out to the Philippines, he had a dossier of intelligence on victims and suspects that formed Operation Endeavour. For several months, he worked with his counterparts from Australia and the US, whose historical and geographical ties provided them with stronger networks in the country.
A surveillance operation started among the shacks in a shanty town in Angeles City and it was soon obvious they had found the right place. Children, without shoes, queued up first thing in the morning and at lunchtime at the houses where webcams were set up to service the paedophile market in the US, Britain and the Netherlands.
“We think of a Mr Big with his millions of pounds – but these guys are living in absolute poverty,” said Lay. “There were several locations all within 30 seconds’ walk. It would appear that, speaking to the locals, everyone knew wha
