Tom O'Carroll was hailed as a hero by perverts across the globe, but now the 'respectable' face of paedophilia faces two years behind bars. David Roberts looks at the events which led to his arrest.

At first glance, the website looks like thousands of other academic sites on the Internet devoted to newsletters, documentation, a library and a forum.

But perhaps it is the disclaimer that the site has "no nude or beautiful" pictures which first arouses suspicion.

This is the website for IPCE, the International Paedophile Child Emancipation, the successor to the now defunct Paedophile Information Exchange (Pie) which campaigned to legalise child sex.

There, among treatises on "Morality - Is it Anti-Sexual or Anti-Violence" and 'Ethics and Intimacy in Intergenerational Relationships" sits "Protection of Innocence", by Tom O'Carroll.

The 800-word paper which was delivered to the Symposium on Sexual Privacy at the annual meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research at Paris, in June 2000, compares children to white women who used to be "protected" by lynch mobs of Ku Klux Klansmen in the American South.

Despite the abhorrent views expressed in its content, the website is not illegal. However, in 2002, the Metropolitan Police's Paedophile Unit began a covert operation to track its members, particularly O'Carroll.

Acting Detective Chief Inspector Neil Thompson, who runs the unit, said: "O'Carroll was a man who was known to us through his dealings with Pie and his previous record."

In 1981, he was convicted of conspiracy to corrupt public morals. On that occasion Pie was condemned as "sick" and "a force for evil which attracted dirty-minded predators".

Four years ago, O'Carroll, a one-time Wakefield journalist and ex-union official, was found guilty of smuggling pictures of naked children into Britain.

However, the Court of Appeal overturned his nine-month conviction when he claimed they were in the tradition of street photography and compared them to 15 pictures being exhibited in the Saatchi Gallery.

While O'Carroll was in London on his many court appearances, he was befriended by an undercover Met officer who built up a relationship with him over three- and-a-half years.

In spring last year, O'Carroll offered the officer access to some pornographic material, saying it had been looked after by a third party. It was in the form of video cassettes and O'Carroll wanted it digitising.

A fingerprint on one of the cassettes led police to Michael Studdert, a former Anglican minister and school chaplain from Surrey.

Studdert, who had inherited a seven-figure fortune, lived on a 17-acre estate in Surrey.

His involvement with the pornographic material came as "little surprise" to Det Chief Insp Thompson.

He said; "He had this big estate and we did expect it to be buried there, I fully expected to be having to find a hole in the ground somewhere. The detectives who discovered the secret vault have to be commended.

"Studdert was a master carpenter and had it well hidden."

Police searching Studdert's bathroom found a secret shelf compartment behind a false wall. At that stage officers thought their search was over.

However, one officer noticed a hook opposite the toilet. When he pulled it, a piece of wood came out from the wall releasing a secret door to a vault.

Peter Zinner, prosecuting, described it as, "an Aladdin's cave of every conceivable form of material of child pornography".

The 50,000 images, thought to be the result of 50 years' collecting, is believed to one of the largest private collections ever found.

At the time of his arrest, O'Carroll was living in a terrace house in Shildon, County Dur-ham, where despite the suspicions of some locals, he led a reasonably normal life, spending a lot of time on his computer.

However, Det Chief Insp Thompson said his arrest would severely curtail any future activities by him and his colleagues.

He added: "Both these men are life-long predatory paedophiles.

"They make no secret of the fact about their sexual orientation. Both have championed for many years with various groups the legalisation of sex between adults and children.

"They have networked with paedophiles around the world, but I have no doubt that this investigation has severely disrupted the activities of the International Paedophile Child Eman- cipation Group, its UK spin-off, as well as other organisations across Europe."