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Nothing
wonderful about this club
Paedophiles
have a global, secretive society. Mayabhushan Nagvenkar
unravels the Wonderland Club that exchanges information on children and
prowls the Net in search of children who can be sexually abused
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| NO
CHILD PLAY: it took Interpol years to break the paedophilia ring |
More than 2,000 hours
of digitised footage of children being sexually abused 7,50,000 child porn
images, each exceeding the other in absurd stages of vulgarity. Many pictures
were that of Indian children. More than 1,200 abused children worldwide.
This more or less sums up ‘The Wonderland Club’ (twc) –
a reclusive, secret, global worldwide ring of paedophiles spread over 49
countries, which was busted by Interpol and other national police agencies.
From the 180-member cartel of child sex perverts, 107 were arrested, 50
convicted. Eight of them committed suicide.
Several Indian Net-prowling paedophiles managed to evade arrest, merely
because Interpol did not consider India a worthy partner for its Operation
Cathedral — the name given for the crackdown on paedophilia —
because “it lacked the technical capability to participate”.
Operation Cathedral started in California in April 1996 and ended in 2001.
It turned out to be the largest operation in the history of international
policing. Only 13 out of the 49 countries where the twc had spread its tentacles
participated in Operation Cathedral.
The Indian paedophiles in question could surely heave a sigh of relief,
as no visible efforts were made by national law enforcement agencies to
nab them. They later transmitted their pornographic images to other members
of the twc.
The busting of the twc was actually a climax of sorts. The seeds of this
operation were sown in 1996, during an overnight party for toddlers in California.
A 10-year-old girl visiting a friend for a sleep-over party in California
was sexually abused by her friend’s father Roland Riva. The act was
recorded by a webcam which transmitted live video images of his sexual act
to his friends in Finland, Australia and Canada and other American states.
Riva and his transcontinental friends were part of an online paedophile
ring called The Orchid Club.
Some months later, Riva was arrested on suspicion of molesting another child.
His interrogation revealed his encounter with the 10-year-old child. When
Riva’s computer was seized and searched, they found digital footage
of several minors being sexually abused. After transmitting the perverse
videos to his colleagues in the Orchid Club, Riva would then sell the explicit
footage to clients in a particular internet chatroom.
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August 21, 2004
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