Child porn sites rise by 64%

Child pornography websites on the internet have more than doubled in the past year, a report claims today.

More than half the illegal sites are American while the number based in Russia has doubled, although sites can be based in one country and managed from elsewhere.

The National Criminal Intelligence Service's annual assessment says the internet has led to a huge growth of child sex offences, with computer-based images of abuse now largely replacing printed material.

It also warns that internet paedophiles are creating a sophisticated form of networking to evade detection.

These specialist systems debrief people who have been arrested to learn more about the monitoring techniques used by police and internet watchdogs.

They also use viruses to attack the computers of members they believe are weak links in their pornography chain.

Online guides to all aspects of child sex are available, with links to chatrooms and the passwords needed for access to illegal images.

While the report concludes that most sex offenders act alone, it says that organised gangs have been tempted into the trade by the profits involved.

Last summer, Operation Ore, an American postal service investigation into child pornography websites, was launched after the names of 7,272 Britons who paid to enter a child porn site in Texas were passed to British police.

In May, it was revealed that, because of the huge number of suspects identified during the operation, hundreds of suspected paedophiles may have escaped prosecution.

Scotland Yard, after consulting CPS lawyers, issued guidelines to police to help speed up the process. These included giving suspects cautions or letting them off with a formal warning instead of taking them to court.

Police chiefs admitted they could not cope with the workload and asked for an extra £2 million.