AUSTRIA
Scotsman
"PA"
A recent police sweep as part of a worldwide crackdown on child pornography netted 96 suspects in Austria alone, including a Roman Catholic priest who has confessed to the crime, police said today.
The operation in early June was part of an international effort to purge cities worldwide of child porn. Officers seized 2,700 CDs and DVDs, another 2,700 video cassettes and numerous computer discs and hard drives containing images of underage children in sexual situations. In total, 12,154 items were confiscated.
The raids were carried out in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Sweden and the UK.
At the time of the operation, police said the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement provided information and leads.
Any new revelations of priests involved in child pornography are particularly disturbing to Austria’s Roman Catholic church. It was rocked by scandal beginning in late 2003 after discoveries of sexually explicit images – some depicting children – on a computer in a seminary in Lower Austria province.