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http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=337282004

Distressing trip into the heart of human darkness

TV REVIEW

Stephen McGinty


Warning: This review contains sentences that some readers may find 
disturbing. As Police Protecting Children began, so should this article, for 
it is impossible to discuss the effects of last nights 90-minute 
documentary, the first in a trilogy, without describing its content and its 
content was deeply upsetting.

Two years ago the FBI arrested Thomas and Janice Reedy, a Texas couple who 
operated a website called Landslide which served as a gateway to child 
pornography obtained and posted on the internet by both a Russian and 
Indonesian webmaster. For $29.95 subscribers across the globe could use 
Landslide to enter a horrific world where children were raped, sodomised, 
bound up and beaten, all for the sexual delight of a global audience that is 
expanding tenfold each year. The tag-line on the site read: "Just Pre-Teen 
Hardcore!!! Nothing Else!!! No Bullshit!"

The pictures, as you can imagine - if you missed it, perhaps you should not 
- were so much worse. Thick black blocks screened the worst and protected 
the BBC from prosecution under the Protection of Children Act 1978, but what 
remained visible was vile. In Britain 7000 people paid their subscription 
fee to view - not just an obscenity, but a criminal act by credit card - and 
so left a paper-trail that led the Child Protection Serious Crime Squad to 
their door, usually early in the morning.

For 18 months film-maker Bob Long and his team accompanied the squad on 
their raids and while the young victims identities were obscured, the 
voyeurs to their pain and distress were not. So we were introduced to Gary 
Clement, a primary school teacher who had 13,000 images of child pornography 
on his computer. During his police interview we heard him explain how he had 
grown to hate the children in his charge and so exorcised his feelings on 
the internet. The worse he felt, the more extreme the image viewed. "The 
harder the image, the younger the child, the worse the scene that was going 
on."

Yet while the police arrested lawyers, accountants, company directors, TV 
executives etc, the greatest time on screen was given to a more minor 
offender: Pete Townshend. The Who guitarist had logged on to the site on 
three occasions, in February, July and August 2002, and paid by Barclaycard. 
No further evidence or downloaded pictures were discovered. He was given a 
formal warning and his name placed on the sex offenders register. Yet the 
footage of him nervously trying to crack a joke about his hearing with 
officers showed a desperate man. In the police interview broadcast last 
night he maintained his defence of researching for a campaign never 
launched.

The impression, however, was of a man drawn to the forbidden. "I wanted to 
see what was going on in the real world." What he saw, and yet what draw him 
back, was an early image of a baby being abused. "I think that was the worst 
thing I have seen. I was very disgusted and very angered by it."

What was surprising about the documentary was the consistent courtesy of the 
police with their suspects. A few minutes after arresting a child 
pornographer coming off a flight from Thailand, officer and criminal were 
discussing the countrys traffic problem. When Townshend thanked the duty 
officer for a cup of tea, he replied: "It was an honour."

Perhaps the rubber hose is pulled out after the camera crews depart, but I 
doubt it - if anything positive can be gleamed from this brief journey into 
the heart of darkness it was the dedication and professionalism of the 
police.

And yet Police Protecting Childrenleft one nagging doubt: what did it add to 
our knowledge of these perpetrators that was not already covered in Longs 
previous film, Hunt for Britains Paedophiles? What education did the 
film-makers provide that made viewing those images that linger long after 
the programme ended worthwhile?

The answer was too little and provided early on by a WPC referring to those 
arrested: "They look just like ordinary people . . . There is nothing sleazy 
about them . . . Its not old men in dirty macs."

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