CEOP 'failed to alert abuse doctor to police' - Authorities failed to alert police of suspicions about a paedophile doctor more than a year before his arrest

17 September 2014 Last updated at 18:51

Myles Bradbury: CEOP 'failed to alert abuse doctor to police'
By Sally Chidzoy and David Keller BBC News





CEOP knew Myles Bradbury was buying potentially harmful videos in 2012, it is revealed

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Authorities failed to alert police of suspicions about a paedophile doctor more than a year before his arrest in December 2013, it has emerged.



Myles Bradbury, of Addenbrooke's Hospital, admitted offences against boys he was treating for cancer.



Child abuse investigators CEOP were told in July 2012 Bradbury bought suspect movies online, but did not act.



The National Crime Agency (NCA), which took over CEOP, said a case review took place and action was taken.



Bradbury, 41, a paediatric haematologist from Herringswell, Suffolk, pleaded guilty on Monday at Cambridge Crown Court, to 25 offences including sexual assault and the making of more than 16,000 indecent images.



The offences were committed at the Cambridge hospital against 18 victims, some as young as eight, who were in his care between 2009 and 2013. He has yet to be sentenced.



The NCA tackles serious organised crime and took over the running of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), a non-departmental public body, last year.



It said CEOP received information from Toronto Police, via Interpol, of up to 2,345 UK individuals, including Bradbury, in July 2012.



The hospital said it was "sickened" by the abuse



This was part of the Canadian force's Project Spade investigating child pornography across the world.



The NCA said the material provided to CEOP included "details" of online purchasers of potentially harmful DVDs and videos.



It added the material was assessed by CEOP at the time and the screenshots were classified as Level 1 on the Copine scale, the least harmful grade.

'Serious failing'

Sixteen months later in November 2013, a few weeks after the agency took over CEOP, the NCA said its deputy director general Phil Gormley became aware the material had not been disseminated to UK police forces and took immediate steps to do so.



It said the data on Myles Bradbury was shared with Suffolk Police a few days later on 27 November, which, by coincidence, was the same day a grandparent of a victim at the hospital made a complaint about the doctor.



Dr Myles Bradbury admitted a total of 25 offences



Suffolk Police arrested Bradbury on 18 December. Cambridgeshire Police made a further arrest 12 days later.



The NCA said Mr Gormley ordered an independent review of CEOP's handling in 2012, stating that it was clear that all steps "which should have been completed at the time did not take place".



It said the review has now finished and action has been taken, but the details are not yet known.



Cambridge MP Julian Huppert, Liberal Democrat, said: "This is an incredibly serious failing. Even if just one child was abused then that's a huge problem, but in this case it was worse than that.



"There's no excuse for sitting on this. All of us want to stop child abuse images. What's needed is not more powers for the police, it's for them to look at the information they've been given.



"This could have been avoided from almost two years ago."



He added Bradbury's victims had the right to be "furious", but he had been assured by ministers after previously raising the issue about the 2,345 suspect perpetrators in parliament that measures had been taken to ensure it would not happen again.



Dr Keith McNeil, chief executive of Addenbrooke's Hospital, said: "These reports that Myles Bradbury was known to the authorities in 2012 will be deeply distressing for patients and families.



"CUH [Cambridge University Hospitals] took immediate action when concerns were first raised with us in November 2013.



"If we had been alerted earlier, we would have taken action earlier."



It previously said it had contacted 800 families of the children it was aware of that Dr Bradbury saw and set up a specialist helpline for anyone affected by the case.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-29240758

What an absolute farce and disgrace that CEOP was.

Mmmmmm..... Was Jim Gamble really doing some 'undercover detective work a few years back....


http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2010-11-13-walsh_N.htm?csp=34life

Sorry if this is in the wrong place, feel free to move it, but I was flabbergasted when I read this story this morning. It's bad enough that a doctor abused his position in the way that he did, even more appalling that he abused sick children, but now it turns out that the Canadian police told CEOP about Myles Bradbury and they did nothing, allowing him to carry on abusing children until 2012 when CEOP was absorbed by the National Crime Agency (and Gamble threw his toys out of the pram and resigned) and the NCA acted on the information and caught him.

So what is it with Gamble and dodgy doctors?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2829302/Paedophile-doctor-used-pen-cam-film-victims-18-boys-molested-consultant-fraction-true-number-series-blunders-officials.html

Here in News topics a while ago now........

https://maddiemccannmystery.forumotion.co.uk/t130-ceop-failed-to-alert-abuse-doctor-to-police-authorities-failed-to-alert-police-of-suspicions-about-a-paedophile-doctor-more-than-a-year-before-his-arrest


Will lock this thread.

Sorry for duplication Candy, didn't see this here. I am totally gobsmacked at Gamble (or at least his organisation) ignoring this when it came to light..oh that's right, in Gamble's world a Doctor is above suspicion and is totally innocent

Gamble has just been on Sky pontificating, saying that before CEOP workers are thrown to the wolves, investigations need to be undertaken to establish whether the staff were properly trained, snowed under with work.
He was not a happy chappy.

Poor Jimbo.

It wasn't my fault eh?    Sounds like he is trying to pass the buck.
 
For goodness sake, when is somebody going to take responsibility for their actions and accept
that they are accountable.      

Er if he was head of CEOP, then he is ultimately responsible if his staff were untrained and overworked. That's the way it rolls and he's been around long enough to know that. Shooting himself in the foot rather spectacularly there.

IIRC Gamble left CEOP a couple of years before this scandal of the files being sat on. It does not imo mean it is right for him to be making excuses for those who were working for CEOP at the time. The man blocked me on twitter when I pointed him to a few factual errors in the book by S and S after he had been singing its praises.

I wonder what caused his resignation from CEOP when it became part of the NCA ?

I understand the explanation was  that CEOP funding would be compromised, but perhaps I misunderstood.

IMO if one has a commitment to a very important cause, one sticks with it come hell or high water.


Still, an old Spudgun here if anyone is interested:

Goes without saying cf, if inappropriate please delete.



http://spudgunsspoutings.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/mccanns-champion-will-real-jim-gamble.html




sunday, 24 march 2013

McCanns CHAMPION. Will the REAL Jim Gamble Please stand up?


It appears I have offended Jim Gamble, former Northern Ireland Police Chief and former Chief Executive of Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.


For those who may have forgotten, Mr. Gamble formed a close alliance with the McCanns, after their daughter Madeleine went missing, making them ‘Poster People’ for his CEOP Website, as well as involving them in other Campaigns.

Andrew wrote:Mmmmmm..... Was Jim Gamble really doing some 'undercover detective work a few years back....


http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2010-11-13-walsh_N.htm?csp=34life

Yuck, yuck, yuck, and what did these two crime fighters do with the kids they asked for? How many kids were saved that day?

I`ve always been sceptical about CEOP`s special operations (i.e. Ore). The information they come by, whether from Landslide or the Canadian or any other country`s special operations, can be used in varying ways. Yes, morally it should be used to track and bring to justice the paedophiles, but some of the names on the list would be `useful` to the security services.

" The Sunday Times (London), 26th January 2003
by Robert Winnett and Gareth Walsh

ON page after page the names unfold with numbing regularity in one of the most disturbing social documents of our time: a list of those suspected of paying to see computer images of children engaged in sex.

They are mostly ordinary names at ordinary addresses. Mr X at 74 such-and-such Avenue, Mr Y at 46 so-and-so Drive (they are nearly all men). They live in average homes in suburban roads from Chichester to Aberdeen, from Tiverton to Newcastle upon Tyne.

Outwardly they probably lead respectable lives but behind their front doors, in the solitude of the rooms where they keep their computers, they pay to become voyeurs in a cyber-world of depravity.

This is the list, compiled by investigators at the US Postal Inspection Service, of British people who have paid to access websites displaying graphic images of child abuse and bestiality. There are more than 7,200 of them, but the document runs to 1,000 pages because the entries log details of different user names and the frequency of their visits.

Then, as you scan down the list, names begin to jump out: senior business executives, a television producer, a historian at a top university. A few names are clearly false – used merely for cover – but in most cases, including that of Pete Townshend, the guitarist with the Who who has admitted accessing a child pornography site for research purposes, the names, credit card details and addresses do match. Fictitious “user names” can be used, but paying requires a genuine credit card, which has led police to their true owners.

A famous newspaper columnist is named, along with a song writer for a legendary pop band and a member of another chart-topping 1980s cult pop group. A well known City PR man and a management guru appear, along with an official with the Church of England.

Personnel at military bases are also represented: people logged on to the paedophile sites from Mildenhall, Suffolk, Buchan, near Peterhead, Scotland, Strike Command in High Wycombe, Waddington in Lincolnshire and Leeming in North Yorkshire.

For weeks rumours have circulated that the names of two Labour ministers appear on the list; but, other than obviously false names, none does.

The suspects come from all areas and all sorts of professions – the law, publishing, the civil service and teaching, including two staff members at Millfield, the private school in Somerset, who were recently arrested (after which the school made it clear that the police inquiry had nothing to do with pupils). A large number of entries appear to be merchant bankers, City lawyers, high- flying accountants and company executives.

A geographical analysis of names with addresses suggests that two-thirds are based in London and the southeast. The stockbroker town of Guildford, with a population of 130,000, has 10 people thought to have accessed child porn websites. Reading has 30 suspects, Southampton 15, Milton Keynes 14 and Brighton and Hove 12. The area around Cambridge, with a population of just over 100,000, has 20 people appearing on the list, with several in the small town of St Neots.

All the suspects are said to have used their credit cards to pay a Pounds 21 monthly fee to Landslide Productions, the Texas firm that provided them with links to 300 pay-per-view child pornography websites.

With titles such as Cyber Lolita and Child Rape, the sites were so explicit that they shocked even the most seasoned detectives. An eight-year-old girl and her six-year-old brother, both from Manchester, are among the few youngsters so far identified. A Scotland Yard officer said they had been abused by their stepfather and photographed in sex acts.

The US inquiry began three years ago and investigators face a mountainous task in corroborating the details. Forces across Britain have spent seven months working through the names of those in their area. So far more than 1,200 have been arrested. Hundreds more will be questioned in the next few weeks, their homes and offices searched and their computers seized. Some users accessed the sites only once. But many on the list cannot argue that they did not know what they would be viewing: the records show that some accessed the internet service at least 50 times.

The investigation into the “master list” of 7,272 British suspects, drawn from an estimated 75,000 international subscribers, is known as Operation Ore. Detectives privately admit that in its early stages it was mismanaged and that a shortage of resources led to a huge logjam at police forensic science laboratories, where seized computers are examined.

“It was a shambles,” said one senior Scotland Yard detective. The National Criminal Intelligence Service initially focused on suspects who had most frequently accessed the site. Only later did senior officers realise that they needed to concentrate first on those who posed the greatest threat to children.

Officers then divided the suspects into three groups. The highest priority was given to anyone who had access to children, a previous conviction or who was on the sex offenders’ list. The second category covered those in a position of official authority. The third and largest group covers those who are not regarded as posing a direct risk to children.

Operation Ore has already ensnared the majority of those in categories one and two. They include teachers, barristers, solicitors, university lecturers, hospital consultants, a deputy prison governor, a senior Treasury civil servant and 50 policemen (including two involved in the investigation into the murder of two girls in Soham, Cambridgeshire, last year).

But police have hardly begun approaching those in category three, which contains some 6,000 apparently respectable members of society.

https://spotlightonabuse.wordpress.com/category/operation-ore/page/2/

I don't think Operation Ore had very much to do with protecting children.  My heart goes out to the 144 kids seized from their beds in the middle of the night and placed into care.  Who interrogated them, what medical procedures were they forced to endure to collect evidence against their fathers?  The whole business sickens me to the core.