"They gave me the power to be the bouncer of the room. It gave me power to vet members -- but I didn't want to kick people out of the room. I wanted them to come in and be welcome so we could arrest them," Sgt. Paul Krawczyk said yesterday, as police announced the dismantling of an online trading post for images of child sexual abuse involving more than 700 members in 35 countries.

"It gave me the power to be able to trace the members. That's why we wanted this power and they gave it to us on a silver platter," said Krawczyk, who until recently was a detective with the much-lauded Child Exploitation Unit of the Toronto Police Service.

The results of his stunning infiltration of the Internet chat room called "Kids The Light of Our Lives" was unveiled yesterday on the world stage.

So far, 31 children were rescued from abuse -- including one in Canada -- as police raided homes of those accused of sharing pictures and videos described by officers as horrific documentation of child rape and other forms of sexual abuse.

Arrested in the 10-month long operation were the British-based ringleaders of the group and an undeclared number of other participants, including 10 Canadian males, police said.

Those arrested in Canada include four people who were from Toronto, three from elsewhere in Ontario and three from British Columbia. One was a young offender.

Timothy Cox, a British man known by the online alias "Son of God," was the ringleader who ran the chatroom, police in Britain said.

Cox led a double life, working in the family brewery by day and -- unbeknown to his parents, sister and 26-year-old girlfriend, with whom he lived near Stowmarket in Suffolk -- obsessively "hosting" the site during his time off.

He was given an indeterminate jail sentence yesterday after being convicted of possessing more than 75,000 images of abuse, some involving knives.

© The Vancouver Province 2007