Pictures of Irish schoolgirls placed on pornographic website

The PSNI is investigating how Northern Irish schoolgirls have had their pictures posted on a pornographic website that has paedophile viewers.

A total of 731 photographs of schoolgirls from post-primary schools across Northern Ireland were placed on the site, the BBC Spotlight programme reported last night.

The pictures appeared to have been taken from legitimate sites, but then placed on the pornographic site without the consent or knowledge of the girls, according to Spotlight.

The programme reported that the pictures were taken in normal situations inside and outside school. The photographs were those that the girls had taken of themselves and their friends.

In some of the pictures underwear was exposed as well as some bare skin, Spotlight added. Neither the pupils nor the schools did anything wrong, it said.

Multiple galleries

However, according to the programme, the pornographic website had multiple galleries of the schoolgirls under provocative headings. “Explicit” paedophilic comments were placed by viewers under some of the pictures, it said.

Notwithstanding, the pictures and the comments the site is legal, according to Spotlight. It reported the matter to the PSNI’s child protection unit and all the schools concerned were informed.

While the website is registered to an offshore accountancy business in Cyprus, with its servers located in The Netherlands, it is actually based in and run from Israel, it reported.

When the company was challenged by Spotlight the pictures were removed from the website. The company involved, however, refused to say who uploaded them.

Jim Gamble, formerly of the British Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) said it was almost certain the images "will end up in paedophile collections".