Maltese IRC (Internet Relay Chat) chat rooms have been inundated by paedophiles who post links to child pornographic chat rooms where pornographic photographs of young girls, some as young as toddlers, engaging in various forms of sexual activity are exchanged.

A dossier of information of online chat activity on Maltese IRC channels seen by this newspaper, and which is also in the hands of the police, shows that two Maltese chat rooms in particular are frequently targeted by child pornographic channels, where depraved individuals congregate to share images and information about their sick predilections.

This week, in a case which shocked the country, five Maltese men were arraigned in court on charges relating to sexual activity with underage persons, child pornography and inducing under-aged persons into prostitution.

This newspaper is informed that back in October of last year a private citizen, (who for the purposes of this article will be given a pseudonym to protect his identity, and will be referred to as Mr Borg) noticed Maltese internet chat rooms had begun being used by paedophiles who regularly posted links to channels sharing pornographic images of children.

When he brought the matter to the attention of chat room’s administrators, he was told to not interfere and to “Shut the f**k up”.

Mr Borg came across the online paedophilia operation quite coincidentally. His saga, in fact, began a few years ago when he was physically assaulted by another man. The man claimed that someone using Mr Borg’s name and surname was on a Maltese IRC chat room, and that whoever used his name had harassed his wife. Someone, Mr Borg said, had told his attacker where he was. After the incident, Mr Borg began entering the chat room in order to see what was going on and to figure out how someone using his name had known certain personal details about him.

A couple of years later, he began to receive phone calls from friends who told him that someone impersonating him was using obscenities and threatening people in a Maltese chat room.

He filed a number of police reports over the years, but in 2013 the police called him in and accused him of using obscenities in the chat room.

Mr Borg says that once he discovered that there really was someone using his name, he continued to speak to the police, who, however, refused to follow up on the report given that the person who impersonated him had a masked IP address.

Later in 2014, Mr Borg received a virtual invite in a Maltese chat room to go into other channels, where pornographic material, including child pornography, was shared. “After completely losing trust in the police after I, the victim, was transformed into the accused, I decided not to file a report and left it alone”.

These invites, however, became more frequent and began appearing on a near-daily basis. This is when he began to contact the channel operators, who only told him to mind his own business.

After that, he went to the police with the dossier of what he had encountered on Maltese MIRC channels.

Mr Borg said that while Maltese chat rooms are not what he describes as ‘paedo-pornographic’, adverts for other such channels are frequently posted. Regardless of reports Mr Borg made to the administrators, no action to stop this was ever taken, he says.

He explained how links to the paedophilic chat rooms would be sent to members through general and private messages in the Malta chat rooms and that they would be published on their main chat room page. Once clicking on those links, one is directed to other chat rooms where links would be posted to pornographic images of children aged from toddler to pubescent, and other similar images.