Child porn on Web sparks outrage

An email message advertising a catalogue of child porn was received by thousands of Internet users around the world last week from an address in Jackson Heights, New York.

The sender, who offered paedophile images to order by morphing customers' faces on to shots of sexual acts with children as young as four, sent out up to 9,000 messages using an America Online account.

Recipients were outraged by the message headed 'child sex', which implied they fitted a category of likely customers.

'I am a fan of child pornography and for the past four years have been able to gather quite a collection of it,' read the message.

'I have pictures, VHS tapes, posters, audio recordings and games. For $2.99 we can send you a personalised audio cassette of a little boy saying your name.'

Compuserve's switchboard was jammed with complaints and a representative at the 115th police precinct in Jackson Heights said the station had received calls from all over the world.

Manhattan South Vice Squad said a suspect was being questioned in direct response to the Web users' complaints.

'We have no one in custody, but we are questioning someone,' said a representative.

The investigation continues.