Police have been forced to shut down a website offering help to victims of drug rape after sick hackers broke in and redirected visitors to a child pornography page.
Anyone trying to access the Drug Rape Trust website - which was set up by a senior Metropolitan Police officer from Southend - found themselves looking at vile sex images of children.
Metropolitan Police officers discovered the problem at the start of the week and technical staff were told to shut the site down.
The Drug Rape Trust, set up in December 1999 by Det Chief Insp Peter Sturman and his wife Cindy and run from their home in Southchurch Boulevard, Thorpe Bay, collapsed earlier this year because of a lack of funding, but the website was left running.
An Essex Police spokesman said: "Community safety officers brought it to the attention of our hi-tech crime department at the start of the week that people accessing the Drug Rape Trust website were being redirected to a child pornography site."
A Metropolitan Police source said: "Someone had hacked into the site and tampered with it so anyone typing in the web address was being directed to a child pornography site.
"Obviously, we didn't want officers directing rape victims to this site, so we were forced to close it down."
Published Thursday, June 5, 2003
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