State Crime Command Assistant Commissioner Graeme Morgan admitted Thursday that his team of porn-fighting police officers had botched an effort to identify three victims of child pornography, and instead ended up sending full images of the young girls to hundreds of school principals.
The photos were first emailed by the Child Protection and Sex Crimes Squad to the New South Wales Education Department and were then forwarded to 1,800 principals throughout Sydney.
"Police intended only the faces of the three young girls to be viewed by the principals," Morgan said in a public apology to the principals and any one else who saw the full images. "I can only imagine that they would have been horrified by them."
The mistake was brought to the attention of police after several school principals telephoned the station with complaints that they had received images of the girls being molested. The photos were originally obtained from a child porn suspect facing a Dec. 15 hearing for possessing and distributing child porn.
Sydney police officials are claiming that the oversight was the result of a computer glitch and they have issued an advisory to all school principals to destroy the images upon receipt.
According to reports, the images showed the three girls, between the ages of 4 and 8, in explicit poses. In one of the photos, an unidentified man is having sex with one of the victims.
Morgan said that the intention behind sending headshots of the girls to school leaders was to help identify whether they were from Australia.
Morgan added that the officers involved in the oversight would not be disciplined, although an inquiry is being conducted and measures will be taken to prevent it from happening again.
Police have so far denied that the images were in any way related to Operation Auxin, the nationwide crackdown on Internet child pornography users.