Australia- Australian teacher kills himself over child-porn charge

6-7-2008 Australia:

Sydney - Australian police investigating an international child pornography ring confirmed Friday that a 59-year-old teacher had committed suicide rather than face charges in court.

Teachers, youth workers and a policeman were among 90 men, aged 19-81, charged in the nation's biggest ever swoop on those engaged in child pornography.

The Interpol-led investigation was triggered six months ago when a hacker infiltrated a respectable European web site to post 99 pictures of young girls being abused. The site, which was only up for 76 hours, received an astonishing 12 million hits from 150,000 computer users.

More than 1,500 Australians, using 2,883 computer IP addresses, have been identified as visitors to the site.

Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson said many more charges were expected.

"The other aspect that we follow up is that apart from the material that we have information about that's been downloaded is whether the people concerned have other images of child pornography too," he told national broadcaster ABC. "In fact, one person had 7,000 images." ..News Source.. by Saurav Shukla