Hospital suspends 'child porn surfer'

The worker allegedly viewed porn at work

A hospital worker has been suspended from his job for looking at child pornography using the internet at work.

Swansea NHS Trust has not named the man and it is not clear which of the county's nine hospitals he is employed by.

South Wales Police confirmed a man has been released on police bail pending further inquiries into the claims.

It comes as online paedophilia continues to dog police eager to crack down on potential paedophiles who are using the web to distribute and consume obscene images.

It is not clear where the member of staff was working

The man at the centre of the south Wales allegations does not have contact with children through his job, the health trust said.

"I can confirm that a member of staff has been suspended in relation to inappropriate access to the internet," said Andrew Bellamy, director of corporate development.

"If the allegations are true, disciplinary action will follow."

Porn busts

The region's two largest centres are Morriston Hospital and Singleton Hospital.

It is unclear which department the suspended member of staff was working at or where is said to have accessed the porn website.

In a separate case in July, a specialist heart surgeon from Birmingham's City Hospital was jailed for nine months, placed on the sex offenders' register and banned from working with children after admitting using hospital computers to view several child porn sites.

The General Medical Council was due to rule on necessary disciplinary action.

Detectives' action

Police around the UK have made several high-profile busts at alleged child porn surfers' homes over the last couple of years, tracing suspects using a variety of detection methods.

The voluntary Internet Watch Foundation watchdog, which has no legal teeth, exists to take tip-offs from concerned web users and acts with internet service providers, who can remove offending material from sites on a goodwill basis and inform detectives.

A hi-tech crime unit at the National Criminal Intelligence Service has also turned its attentions to paedophilia.

And individual police forces are continuing to make regular arrests in full view of the press.

In August, for example, North Wales Police arrested 12 people after tracing customers of an illegal US paedophilia site using credit card records.