Latest Offenders Durham

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A man police said was the "librarian" of a global internet child abuse ring has been jailed indefinitely.

Philip Anthony Thompson, of Stockton-on-Tees, will serve at least three years and nine months, but a Teesside judge warned it could be much longer.

Thompson, 27, admitted 27 charges, including causing children aged under 13 to engage in sexual activity.

The website he was involved with used "borderline-legal" images to bring together "like-minded" people.

Police have so far pinpointed 360 suspects.

Handing down sentence at Teesside Crown Court, Judge Michael Taylor said Thompson posed a "very significant risk" to the public and therefore he would be imposing an indeterminate prison sentence for public protection.

He told him: "You have shown that you are a very dangerous individual indeed. I consider that you pose a very significant risk to the public and you are a dangerous offender."

"He [Thompson] was... the librarian/warehouseman for a myriad of images that were distributed to like-minded individuals both in this country and elsewhere" Det Chief Supt Mark Braithwaite, Cleveland Police.

Thompson, who lives with his mother in Gooseport Road, has also been placed on the sex offenders' register for life and banned from the internet and any contact with children.About 241,000 child abuse images - which were still and moving images of varying degrees of extremity - were discovered in his possession.

Police said more than 130 suspects had been uncovered in the UK and more than 50 arrests have been made.

As a result, 15 children in the UK have been removed from situations where they were being abused or were accessible to an offender.

Police revealed the network was first infiltrated by Metropolitan Police officers, working undercover, in May 2007

It became the largest investigation of its kind in the UK, also involving Cleveland Police and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).

Users of the forum would post borderline-legal images of children and pass comments on them.

Police said "indicative images" rather than explicit child sex abuse images were posted online in an attempt to keep the site "below the radar" and prevent it being shut down.

According to CEOP, which co-ordinates covert investigations into internet child sexual abuse, users would make contact this way then meet other like-minded individuals and exchange images in "different online environments".

Its chief executive Jim Gamble said: "This website - whilst appearing to operate on the margins of legality - was clearly a front for the sinister, sexual abuse of children and an image trading ground for paedophiles."

Det Chief Supt Mark Braithwaite, from Cleveland Police, said Thompson had been "a critical piece of this network".

"He was the librarian/warehouseman for a myriad of images that were distributed to like-minded individuals both in this country and elsewhere."

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Twisted Army Cadet Major Andrew Shaw was snared when his details were picked up by child porn investigators in the USA.

As reported in later editions of last night's Gazette, Shaw, 49, has been jailed for ten years for his role in a sick plot to offer a schoolgirl for sex on the Internet.

The perverted plan, hatched with a man he had never met, sparked a year-long investigation on both sides of the Atlantic.

Police swooped after details of Shaw's sick correspondence with Isle of Wight postman Alan Lawson were passed to the National Criminal Intelligence Service.

He is understood to have been traced via a computer he used in his role as an executive officer with the Cleveland Army Cadet Force.

Shaw was employed by the Reserved Forces and Cadets Association in an administrative role. The Army has stressed that no cadets were involved in this case.

Teesside Crown Court heard how Shaw sent Lawson pictures of himself naked with the girl, while in e-mails Lawson spoke of drugging and sexually assaulting the child.

The pair, who admitted possession and distribution of child pornography, were found guilty by a Teesside jury of conspiracy to rape.

Shaw was jailed in February for 14 years, but the term was later reduced to ten years.

For legal reasons the case could not be reported until yesterday.

Lawson's sentence was cut by the judge from ten years to eight.

Ministry of Defence Police spokesman Steve Partridge said: "This was a wide-ranging inquiry which began after information was passed to the MoD Police following an investigation by the authorities in the US.

"Dedicated officers spent almost a year piecing together the electronic trail of evidence which helped lead to the identification of the two offenders and resulted in their successful prosecution.

"We believe the sentences of ten and eight years handed down by the court adequately reflect the seriousness of their crimes."

A Durham Police spokesman added: "We supported the MoD Police's operation to arrest Shaw and we went with them to his home in Barnard Castle.

"It was an early morning raid after which he was taken to a police station in Durham where he was interviewed by the MoD Police and charged."