Child sex abuse caught on video

In what is believed to be a first for Canadian police, the Toronto force has released digital video images of an unknown man police allege sexually abused a girl, in an effort to save the youngster from further "horrific" abuse.

The images — four of the man and three of a room — were taken from a 33-minute pornographic video found on the computers of 10 of the 27 people charged earlier this year in an international child pornography ring, Staff Insp. Jane Wilcox said at a press conference at police headquarters yesterday.

"We're asking the public: `Please look at this man. Please look at this room. If you know who this man is, if you know where this room is, please call police,'" Wilcox said. "...We are very concerned about the safety of the little girl whose image was also in this video. We need to find her."

The girl is white, between the ages of 8 and 10, but police would not reveal any more details. "We believe that this person is Canadian and that this room is in Canada because the title of the video included the words — Canadian girl," Wilcox said.

In March, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced a takedown of the ringleaders of a massive international child porn ring. Police made 27 arrests in Canada, United States, Australia and Britain, and seized computers from those accused to find countless child pornography images.

Described as "the worst imaginable forms of child pornography," the images were distributed in an online chat room known as Kiddypix and Kiddyvids and included real-time sexual abuse of children as young as 18 months. Yesterday, Wilcox said police are going through thousands of images.

In the images released yesterday, some originally included the little girl, but in an effort to protect her identity, she had been digitally removed. The man is wanted for sexual assault on a child. "The video revealed a sexual assault of a young child and that's all I'm going to comment on about the content of that event. The main focus is who is this man and where is that room," Wilcox said.

About a year ago, after repeatedly seeing pornographic images of a different girl, Toronto police took the then unprecedented move of releasing hotel photos where the girl had been abused.

The suspect in that case was her adoptive father who had already been jailed in Pennsylvania for the acts.