PAEDOPHILES who chose jobs in order to be surrounded by children were able to continue their abuse for years because evidence was ignored.

A doctor who abused child cancer patients and a teacher who filmed children at a school and leisure centre were among those able to take advantage of rows by public authorities set up to catch them.

A report, published yesterday by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, concluded there had been a failure to handle intelligence properly.

In July 2012, Toronto Police provided the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre with the names of a large number of people from the UK who had bought films of child abuse online from a Canadian company, after a two-year investigation.

Among them was Dr Myles Bradbury, 43, of Herringswell, Suffolk, who worked as a cancer specialist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, in Cambridge, and ran clinics in Colchester.

Also Martin Goldberg, deputy headteacher at Thorpe Hall School, Southend.

For more than a year little was done with the evidence and it was only when Toronto Police contacted the National Crime Agency, who had taken charge of Ceop, in October 2013 to find out how the investigation was going, did it become clear almost nothing had been done.

The information was eventually passed on to police forces in November 2013, although Essex Police then took another nine months to properly assess it.

The IPCC report into the handling of data by Ceop concluded there were disagreements about who should do what with the data, so nothing happened.

IPCC Commissioner Carl Gumsley said: “The IPCC investigation produced evidence to show that the intelligence provided by the Canadian authorities was poorly handled by the CEOP Centre.

“The NCA had identified this fact and had commissioned two internal reviews which had already made a number of recommendations that were accepted by the Agency and Ceop, to improve its processes. This, at least, is something positive to come out of this matter.”

Bradbury, 43, was jailed for 16 years for abusing 18 sick children in 2015.

Goldberg killed himself aged 46 after being questioned by police about footage of children from a school and leisure centre among thousands of images.

An IPCC investigation into Essex Police was subsequently launched.

A spokesman for Essex Police said it was aware of the report.