State police have arrested 25 people in the latest crackdown on child pornography in New Jersey.

What’s called ‘Operation Ever Vigilant’ targeted New Jersey residents who downloaded and distributed videos of young children being sexually molested.

Attorney General Jeff Chiesa says the videos are produced by torturing children.

 “The viewing of child pornography can also put children in danger in other ways because it is part of a continuum of deviant behaviors that in some cases can lead to other sex offenses.”

The defendants range in age from 17 to 66.

Chiesa says five of the men arrested had direct contact with young children, and two of them regularly acted as babysitters.

 “The concern is that they had contact with children and the ability to be with children in a trusted atmosphere. In all likelihood these were parents who like anybody else would were trusting somebody to watch and care for their children, and now we know they were engaged in the kind of behavior that is criminal and requires severe punishment.”

Chiesa says authorities will search the computers they seized during the arrests and will continue to monitor Internet file sharing sites to find other people involved in the child porn network.

“We want anyone who would consider linking themselves to this depraved network of users and sharers of child pornography to know that there are severe penalties for doing so, and we want then to know that we are watching them by patrolling the Internet.”