A further insight into the extent of child abuse and exploitation published on the internet was revealed yesterday when British detectives said they were trying to close a website showing pictures of a man eating a dismembered baby.

Scotland Yard is liaising with the FBI in the US to close the website, based in California, which has been linked with the ritual abuse of children. Last night the website was still accessible.

The discovery of the site comes just a week after seven British men were jailed for their involvement in the Wonderland paedophile ring.

While this site was not specifically uncovered by Operation Cathedral which investigated the ring, British detectives are currently at the forefront of efforts to close it down. A second website showing similar scenes of sadistic and ritualistic abuse has been successfully
shut.

The existence of the websites was revealed by two patients at the Clinic for Dissociative Studies based in London's Harley Street and run by Valerie Sinason, a psychotherapist who specialises in the treatment of adult survivors of child abuse.

Dr Sinason has attracted controversy in the past over her claims that some children are abused in Satanic rituals involving ceremonies and animal or human sacrifice. She submitted a report on her claims, based on the treatment of 51 patients, to the health department last July, which funded her research. Other researchers have disputed her claims. Professor Jean La Fontaine, who carried out a separate study also funded by the health department, found no evidence of ritual abuse.

The Metropolitan Police have provided an officer to work with Dr Sinason's clinic for half a day a month to investigate claims of abuse made by patients. Detective Inspector Clive Driscoll, a specialist in paedophile crimes, said he was working with colleagues in America to track the origin of the picture of the man eating the baby. The website, which acknowledges that the act pictured "is unlikely to be legal under any jurisdiction" says it received the pictures from an anonymous source but they were "probably taken in Hong Kong or Japan".

Mr Driscoll said: "The pictures are awful. It is your worst nightmare unfolding in front of you. I took them to a very senior forensic pathologist - a man I have a lot of faith in - and he looked me in the eye and said: These are the pictures I hoped I would never see.' For me it's a murder scene because I don't know how that child died. That is why I have got massive concern about it and I think something should be done about it."

Dr Sinason said: "I heard accounts of the websites from two different survivors of abuse who didn't know each other. It is a further sign that if you want to do anything bizarre you will get away with it because no one will believe it or speak about it."