A child rape ordered on the Internet and directed live behind a screen: it is the principle of “livestreaming”, as summary as it is sordid. According to franceinfo information, as of Monday, December 6, 300 “targets” have been tracked down by investigators from the Central Office for the Repression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP). These 300 French people are suspected of having ordered the rapes or sexual assaults of children abroad. The phenomenon worries more and more the French authorities because it is in full expansion since the beginning of the health crisis.
Indeed, with the travel ban during the first confinement, many pedophiles have replaced sex tourism with livestreaming. The practice is all the more dangerous as it is within the reach of almost anyone. For these “clients” it suffices to enter into contact via the Internet with intermediaries, often on adult pornographic forums. They then describe the scene they want to see, determine the number of children, their age, the desired acts and the duration, usually between thirty minutes and an hour. The cost is ridiculous, from 15 to 60 dollars on average. The rape is then committed abroad and broadcast live to the “client”.
The phenomenon appeared in the Philippines in 2012: since then, it has continued to develop and spread to new countries, such as Laos or India. It also happens in Eastern Europe, especially in Romania. At first, the children were delivered by networks “rather organized” but, currently, “it is happening more and more at the family level”, explains Katie Steel, deputy head of the miners group at OCRVP. “These are very poor families, who earn the equivalent of the average monthly salary in an hour of livestreaming.”
These children are very young: they are 5 years old on average, sometimes younger. All are left to the wishes of the “client”, who can even give orders live during the rape. In some videos, this can go as far as acts of torture and barbarism carried out live. The “clients” are “100% of men”, details Sophie Gschwind, magistrate at the Paris minors’ prosecutor’s office, who since 2019 has centralized all livestreaming files in France. Their profiles are varied.
“There is no typical profile. It can range from the isolated individual, to an integrated individual with a family life.”
Sophie Gschwind, magistrate at the Paris minors’ prosecutor’s officeto franceinfo
Their psychiatric profiles, however, have some common features. “A fairly important anchoring in child pornography, an absence of guilt or empathy for the victims and above all, a trivialization of these facts, Sophie list Gschwind, with this idea that from the moment you are behind the screen, you do not participate in what is committed. “
How to go back to the sponsors, when everything happens live on the Internet? “The difficulty arose when we started to process these files, recalls Sophie Gschwind. These are videos recorded and produced when the interlocutor is behind his screen giving orders. It’s like a classic conversation that you can have on a videoconference and that is therefore not recorded. ” However, in recent months, “the courts condemn without asking that these videos be necessarily produced in the file”, explains the magistrate. Investigators rely in particular on cooperation with the authorities in the Philippines but also on traces of financial transactions or electronic exchanges. This evidence may now be sufficient to pass heavy sentences.
In fact, since January 2020, judges can condemn livestreaming “clients” for complicity in sexual assault or rape, and not only for possessing child pornography images. “In French law, whoever gives instructions from France is complicit in the offense that is committed and therefore incurs the same penalty as the author. When these facts concern minors under 15, he incurs twenty years of criminal imprisonment before an assize court “, explains Sophie Gschwind. In 2021, two cases were thus tried in criminal courts for complicity in sexual assault. In 2022, for the first time, a man will be tried for complicity in rape in a livestreaming case.
The other major challenge for investigators is the identification of child victims on the other side of the world. This is one of Ludivine Piron’s missions at ECPAT (End child prostitution, child pornography and trafficking of children for sexual purposes), an NGO that campaigns against the sexual exploitation of children and works closely with OCRVP investigators on these cases. “The difficulty in livestreaming is that the facts take place at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Everybody.” Consequence: the visual backgrounds of the videos only show a banal decoration or, in the slums, a wall with a mattress. “It is therefore very difficult to have very concrete elements of identification”, explains Ludivine Piron. “Our role is to bring children back to the heart of these files, so that they are not just call numbers in files, that we can pronounce their name, that we know what they have gone through, what that implies, continues the member of ECPAT. It is our role to remind that, behind images, children are really sexually assaulted or raped. It’s very important to be able to bring it back to the heart of these trials. “
These trials are still rare, although several cases should soon be examined by a court. As of December 6, the Paris prosecutor’s office is conducting twelve preliminary inquiries and four judicial inquiries in livestreaming cases. However, these figures remain very low compared to the reality of the phenomenon. The finding is also unanimous: the justice and law enforcement agencies lack the means. One figure sums up the situation well: in France, 17 specialized investigators are working on these cases. They are 320 in the United Kingdom and 150 in the Netherlands.