France: 33 individuals apprehended in operation against child sexual abuse
An alert from the United States enabled the arrest of 33 suspects, aged 37 to 79, spread across 28 departments, for downloading violent content involving minors.
France: 33 individuals apprehended in operation against child sexual abuse
American services transmitted intelligence that triggered a series of large-scale arrests on French soil. On 24 and 25 June, police and gendarmes apprehended 33 men in 28 departments. Their ages range from 37 to 79 years. All are suspected of activities linked to child sexual abuse.
The suspects' profiles are varied: a railway employee, a catering professional, a retired person. Some already had a criminal record for offences of a similar nature. It was American agencies that identified these men obtaining video recordings in which minors appear suffering assaults and sexual abuse. French services were informed without delay.
Aurélie Besançon, who heads the Minors' Office, described the operation as exceptional: the investigators targeted individuals who had acquired images of extreme brutality, featuring babies and very young children.
According to information provided by franceinfo, one of the videos has been circulating for more than ten years in dedicated networks under the name "Daisy Destruction". This material, of unprecedented violence, cannot be completely erased from the web.
Véronique Béchu, who chairs the e-Enfance association, recalls a digital reality: once published, content always persists somewhere, whether on a remote server, external memory, a computer or a smartphone.
Washington regularly informs Paris of acts of child abuse. This mechanism had already enabled the detection, several months before the tragedy of Lyhanna, of the online behaviour of Jérôme Barrella. An American organisation had transmitted the information to French authorities, without judges being informed at the time.
Source: franceinfo
Source: France Info