How detectives let child porn suspects off hook: They sat on list of 2,300 paedophiles for 14 months - but did nothing

Teacher John Cowell, who was named on the list

Hundreds of paedophiles will escape justice because Britain’s crime agency failed to act on a cache of information.

Senior investigators at the National Crime Agency (NCA) sat on the names of 2,345 suspects for at least 14 months, it emerged last night.

By the time local police forces got involved, little action could be taken because of the time that had passed, and some of the suspects had even died.

The list of names was provided by Canadian police in July 2012 after they smashed a notorious online store that specialised in indecent images of naked children. Officers in Toronto identified thousands of potential paedophiles and passed the names to forces worldwide via Interpol.

But the NCA apparently left the file gathering dust until November 2013, when it passed it on to police forces. Even then some forces failed to act for months.

Many cases have now had to be abandoned because the information was simply out of date.  (more...)

How detectives let child porn suspects off hook: They sat on list of 2,300 paedophiles for 14 months - but did nothing

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