Wonderland Club

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The Wonderland Club was an international child pornography ring operating over the Internet. It was broken up by the multi-national Operation Cathedral, with arrests on September 1, 1998. Seven UK-based men were convicted for their part in the ring in 2001.

One reason for the high profile of the Wonderland Club was the unusually high number of images involved: 750,000 images with 1,200 unique identifiable faces. Despite substantial work by many of the agencies involved only a very small number of those appearing in the images have been identified. An indeterminate number of the images may be faked or virtual images. Others are thought to be relatively innocous images of young children, but there are also images of children being actively abused.

The international and highly organised nature of the ring, as well as the large numbers of images involved, has led the Wonderland Club to be the poster child for the anti-pornography movement and for a number of pieces of anti-child pornography legislation.