A 20-year prison sentence was handed down in France on Friday to a man accused of incest and who is so active on the dark web that he has become a priority target in the global fight against online child crime.
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The former cantonal employee was charged with possessing and distributing on the Internet “tens of thousands” of pornographic photos and videos “featuring very young minors,” including his two little girls, and was also responsible for repeated rapes and sexual assaults, the latter from their birth in the 2012 and 2015 until his arrest in 2020.
Police officers from the Central Office for Combating Personal Violence, in collaboration with Europol and Interpol, spent several years tracking this “very active” Internet user on the Darknet, known in particular under the pseudonym “Kali”.
The Gironde Assize Court, where the trial has been held in camera since Wednesday, concluded this verdict, which corresponds to the maximum penalty provided for by law, with a security period of two thirds.
She also ordered social court supervision for ten years with an interim care order and a ban on contact with children, as well as a prison sentence of a further seven years if these measures were not complied with.
This 43-year-old father admitted the facts during the investigation. At the request of his ex-partner, mother of their three children, the court ordered the hearing to be held behind closed doors.
In 2017, he notably shared images showing two little girls, then “about five years old” for one, “one or two years old” for the other, which was his own.
According to the indictment, it was a “technical imprudence” committed during the transmission of a video that made it possible to identify and arrest him. Investigators then found him several times at his home in Frontenac (Gironde, southwestern France). Tens of thousands of files on underage victims of child criminals around the world.
In addition to the family, four child protection associations became civil parties in the case.
For Me Nathalie Bucquet, lawyer for the Innocence association in Danger, sentencing the defendant to the maximum penalty is “a very important decision”.
“So that the child criminal community is aware that the punishments imposed are becoming increasingly harsh,” she told AFP, welcoming that the judiciary “takes into account the international dimension of these measures.”