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(COMTEX) B: Italian police crack down on child pornography ring that included
three priests ( AP WorldStream )

ROME, May 24, 2005 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Italian police have carried
out raids across Italy against 186 suspected members of a child pornography ring
that downloaded pictures from an exclusive site and included three priests,
officials said Tuesday.

The group downloaded photos and video of sex abuse against children, whose ages
ranged from 4 to 8, from a Web site that could only be entered with a password,
according to a police officer in the Sicilian town of Syracuse, where the probe
into the ring was based.

The officer, who cited office policy that he not be identified, said the site
was only operable for nine days before authorities closed it down last July,
following a tip from Telefono Arcobaleno, a local association that scans the
Internet to combat child abuse.

Police carried out searches at the homes and offices of 159 of the suspects in
16 of Italy's 20 regions Tuesday, the official said. The remaining 27 suspects
had their homes and offices searched in recent months.

The suspects also included a mayor, a police officer and a social worker. The
investigation is continuing and none of the suspects has so far been arrested.

During the searches police seized child pornography videos from computers owned
by the three priests, and were studying some homemade videos picked up in the
raids in an attempt to identify where the children had been filmed and who had
filmed them, authorities said.

In an effort to keep it secret the site had not been given an index page and
therefore could not be picked up on Internet search engines. It was run on an
Italian server but advertised on Web sites in several other countries.

Predominantly Catholic Italy has been largely unscathed by the child abuse and
child pornography scandals involving Catholic priests in the United States and
elsewhere, including some European countries.

Copyright 2005 Associated Press, All rights reserved

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