Paedophile group guilty of 'vile' child abuse drawings
Members of a paedophile group are facing jail over indecent pictures, films and drawings of children.
Steven Freeman, who led the Paedophile Information Exchange, admitted charges relating to 3,000 "vile" drawings found at his south London home.
Two others pleaded guilty while another two men were convicted of possessing indecent images at the Old Bailey.
The trial was the first under the 2009 Coroners and Justice Act which includes sketches among indecent images.
Three of the defendants had been leaders of the pressure group, Paedophile Information Exchange (Pie), the court heard.
The drawings found at Freeman's Bellingham home, where the group met, were described at the Old Bailey as "vile and disgusting".
Police found he had been drawing images of children being raped.
Mark Gadsden, prosecuting, said: "These defendants were paedophiles who would regularly meet up at Steven Freeman's address to view images of children - specifically boys."
The images were some of the worst seen by police, court heard.
Police also found about 14,500 pictures and films on computer disks at the home of Freeman and two of the other defendants.
Tens of thousands of images were stored on encrypted hard-drives, officers believe.
Freeman, 56, pleaded guilty to 10 specimen charges of possessing incident images, three charges of distributing the material and one count of failing to disclose the password for an encrypted computer.
John Morrison, 44, of Barnes, admitted two counts of having indecent images and failure to disclose a computer password while Barry Cutler, 61, of Beckenham, Kent, admitted to three offences of having indecent images and failure to provide a password.
John Parratt, 63, who had the same address as Morrison, was a former vice chairman of Pie. He was found guilty of three counts of possessing indecent images.
Leo Adamson, 49, of Kennington, a former executive member of Pie, was also convicted of failure to disclose a computer password.
All five men will be sentenced at a later date.