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30 thousand pedophiles in chats and instant messengers on the darknet and public segments of the Internet were distributing child pornography.
In Cologne on Monday began the trial of the largest network of pedophiles in Germany. The main defendant, 43-year-old Jörg L. from Bergisch Gladbach, became the first node in the network. The former chef is accused of having sex with his three-month-old daughter, recording them on video, and then sending them to like-minded people.
The case began with searches last fall at Jörg L.'s apartment, during which the police found not only pornographic material, but also came across numerous persons with whom he exchanged such information in chats and instant messengers. According to the German newspaper Bild, while the number of suspects reaches 30 thousand people in all lands of the country. Fifty children have already been identified as victims of pedophiles.
According to the state news agency Deutsche Welle (DW), “An inconspicuous house in the small town of Bergisch Gladbach: a small, well-kept garden at the entrance, a flat roof is the perfect illustration of the life of the typical German middle class. According to neighbors, a nice family lived in this house - no complaints, no oddities. "
The discovered child pornographic photos and videos, as well as chats in which Jörg L. corresponded under the pseudonyms "purple06789 Homer Simpson" and "Bullseye", became the first link in the investigation of the case of sexual abuse of children. A department codenamed Berg was created specifically for this investigation in the fall of 2019 in the Cologne Criminal Police. Initially, it included 350 people, now the number of employees has been reduced to 130. Every day, members of the special group view terabytes of photo and video materials, mainly containing scenes of cruel violence against children.
“These photos and videos always affect the psyche - even the psyche of experienced police officers,” says detective Lisa Wagner. Three Berg investigators were forced to seek medical attention and transfer to other departments. But those who continue to plunge into this abyss are driven by the desire to identify criminals and to free children from this nightmare, explains Wagner.
To date, there are 87 suspects, says prosecutor Markus Hartman, who heads the Central Bureau and Contact Point for Cybercrime in North Rhine-Westphalia. This structure deals with particularly serious cybercrimes. The Bergisch-Gladbach case also belongs to them.
As DW notes, the study of evidence against each of the 87 accused provides more and more leads, and the number of alleged criminals is growing. Prosecutor Hartman emphasizes that all cases are links in one giant chain: "They form a whole network of communication structures, which, according to the investigation, facilitated the possibility of committing these criminal acts."
Sometimes up to 1.8 thousand people simultaneously participated in the chats. “By chatting, they reinforced each other's belief that child abuse and sexual abuse was socially acceptable and acceptable,” Hartman said. He calls this "significant perceptual distortion." The realization that a grave crime had been committed was smoothed out by communication with the same criminals. “They assured each other that everything they were doing was perfectly normal, even to the point that the criminal acts were committed by mutual consent with the child,” says the prosecutor.
The number of reported cases of sexual violence against children and the spread of child pornography in Germany is growing steadily. In 2019, almost 16 thousand criminal cases were opened on the fact of sexual violence. More than 12 thousand criminal cases related to child pornography were under investigation in the police. Which is twice as much as in 2016.
In addition, investigators also identified almost 3,000 thousand cases of cyber grooming - a type of sexual violence against children on the Internet, which consists in the fact that criminals register in social networks under the guise of adolescents, rub into the trust of children and try to get intimate videos or photos from them, and then blackmail them into sending even more explicit material, money, or meeting offline.
However, the number of undetected crimes is about seven times higher, says Johannes-Wilhelm Röhrig, the Federal Government Commissioner for the Prevention of Sexual Abuse of Children. He demands that the fight against this crime be perceived as a national task.
The Berlin Tagespiegel has taken up the question of why there are many unsolved cases of child abuse. The main role is played by both the shame and fear of those affected by sexual violence, and the unwillingness to wash dirty linen in public from the environment at home or in schools, boarding schools and other institutions where such cases are most common. All these acts become public knowledge only when the victim begins to speak. Therefore, the task of society is to awaken self-awareness among victims of violence, the newspaper said.
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In Cologne on Monday began the trial of the largest network of pedophiles in Germany. The main defendant, 43-year-old Jörg L. from Bergisch Gladbach, became the first node in the network. The former chef is accused of having sex with his three-month-old daughter, recording them on video, and then sending them to like-minded people.
The case began with searches last fall at Jörg L.'s apartment, during which the police found not only pornographic material, but also came across numerous persons with whom he exchanged such information in chats and instant messengers. According to the German newspaper Bild, while the number of suspects reaches 30 thousand people in all lands of the country. Fifty children have already been identified as victims of pedophiles.
According to the state news agency Deutsche Welle (DW), “An inconspicuous house in the small town of Bergisch Gladbach: a small, well-kept garden at the entrance, a flat roof is the perfect illustration of the life of the typical German middle class. According to neighbors, a nice family lived in this house - no complaints, no oddities. "
The discovered child pornographic photos and videos, as well as chats in which Jörg L. corresponded under the pseudonyms "purple06789 Homer Simpson" and "Bullseye", became the first link in the investigation of the case of sexual abuse of children. A department codenamed Berg was created specifically for this investigation in the fall of 2019 in the Cologne Criminal Police. Initially, it included 350 people, now the number of employees has been reduced to 130. Every day, members of the special group view terabytes of photo and video materials, mainly containing scenes of cruel violence against children.
“These photos and videos always affect the psyche - even the psyche of experienced police officers,” says detective Lisa Wagner. Three Berg investigators were forced to seek medical attention and transfer to other departments. But those who continue to plunge into this abyss are driven by the desire to identify criminals and to free children from this nightmare, explains Wagner.
To date, there are 87 suspects, says prosecutor Markus Hartman, who heads the Central Bureau and Contact Point for Cybercrime in North Rhine-Westphalia. This structure deals with particularly serious cybercrimes. The Bergisch-Gladbach case also belongs to them.
As DW notes, the study of evidence against each of the 87 accused provides more and more leads, and the number of alleged criminals is growing. Prosecutor Hartman emphasizes that all cases are links in one giant chain: "They form a whole network of communication structures, which, according to the investigation, facilitated the possibility of committing these criminal acts."
Sometimes up to 1.8 thousand people simultaneously participated in the chats. “By chatting, they reinforced each other's belief that child abuse and sexual abuse was socially acceptable and acceptable,” Hartman said. He calls this "significant perceptual distortion." The realization that a grave crime had been committed was smoothed out by communication with the same criminals. “They assured each other that everything they were doing was perfectly normal, even to the point that the criminal acts were committed by mutual consent with the child,” says the prosecutor.
The number of reported cases of sexual violence against children and the spread of child pornography in Germany is growing steadily. In 2019, almost 16 thousand criminal cases were opened on the fact of sexual violence. More than 12 thousand criminal cases related to child pornography were under investigation in the police. Which is twice as much as in 2016.
In addition, investigators also identified almost 3,000 thousand cases of cyber grooming - a type of sexual violence against children on the Internet, which consists in the fact that criminals register in social networks under the guise of adolescents, rub into the trust of children and try to get intimate videos or photos from them, and then blackmail them into sending even more explicit material, money, or meeting offline.
However, the number of undetected crimes is about seven times higher, says Johannes-Wilhelm Röhrig, the Federal Government Commissioner for the Prevention of Sexual Abuse of Children. He demands that the fight against this crime be perceived as a national task.
The Berlin Tagespiegel has taken up the question of why there are many unsolved cases of child abuse. The main role is played by both the shame and fear of those affected by sexual violence, and the unwillingness to wash dirty linen in public from the environment at home or in schools, boarding schools and other institutions where such cases are most common. All these acts become public knowledge only when the victim begins to speak. Therefore, the task of society is to awaken self-awareness among victims of violence, the newspaper said.
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