Updated: Thu Feb. 05 2009 4:21:55 PM

ctvtoronto.ca

Police rescued a 4-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl and arrested 31 people in the province's largest-ever Internet child pornography sting.

The Ontario Provincial Police laid 93 charges against the suspects, who mostly live in the Greater Toronto Area, officers announced Thursday.

The suspects were arrested during raids conducted across the province on Wednesday.

Three of the accused, including a 14-year-old, are minors who can't be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. A 60-year-old man is the oldest suspect facing charges, police said.

The accused face charges that include sexual assault, possession and creation of child pornography. Police expect to lay more charges in the coming days.

Officers found the two children and took them into protective custody while raiding the home of a suspect, police said. However, the children are not related, do not live in the same home and were at different locations, they said.

OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino credited improved tracking tools with helping police track down the alleged perpetrators on the Internet. He also credited the Provincial Strategy group as a key component to the investigation.

"The most fundamental responsibility of our society is to protect our children," he said at the news conference.

"The Ontario police services associated with the Provincial Strategy will stop at nothing to hunt down child predators and eliminate the threat they pose to our children and our communities."

Paul Gillespie, a former Toronto police detective who now runs the Kids' Internet Safety Alliance, said that North America has become an unfortunate centre for the production and distribution of child pornography.

"They're not made (in) some far off place in the world," he told CTV Newsnet Thursday.

Still, Gillespie added that tracking down child pornography suspects is difficult since they are usually regular people "from all walks of life."

"The one thing they have in common is their unfortunate interest in sexually abusing children, and the Internet facilitates that."

According to police estimates, about 65,000 computers in Canada are actively involved in distributing child pornography.

While Gillespie said that officials here in Canada need more tools and time to track down child pornographers, he noted that Wednesday's rescue of two children is extremely positive.

"It's very hard to do. These are not stranger attacks. They are typically committed on children by someone in their family or somebody who has control of the kids," he said.

While officials have improved software which allows them to dive into Internet's "dark places" such as file sharing networks and user groups, Gillespie said more study is needed on the offenders themselves.

"I think it's time to put some serious effort ... and research into the offenders, the bad guys, to find out what makes them tick," he said.

"Is there a way to potentially identify something in their DNA, or a gene that might actually give us a greater ability to treat them?" he said.

Gillespie noted that so far, police have been reactive instead of proactive.

"For some reason, people are hardwired and they take pleasure in these horrible images and these atrocities against kids."