child crime streaming in the sights of the French authorities

The modus operandi is always the same: the suspects order and pay – at ridiculous amounts – for “live streaming” sequences, that is to say live video on the Internet. On the other side of the screen in the Philippines, minors, sometimes infants, are sexually assaulted or raped. On January 13 and for the first time in France, a man was sentenced for acts of complicity in sexual assault on minors under 15 years old live on the internet. This airline pilot was sentenced to five years in prison.

Investigations involving French sponsors are increasing at the Central Office for the Repression of Violence against Persons (OCRVP). “If we had one or two cases four years ago, we have several dozen possible in the portfolio and the phenomenon is expanding and obviously worries us very much”, explains Philippe Guichard, director of the OCRVP.

In the service of minors, thirteen investigators are mobilized. They are well acquainted with the business of “live streaming”. The agents go back to potential suspects thanks in particular to the report of the American police agencies, more advanced, but not only. “We are trying to establish financial flows between ‘these clients’ and the Philippines, indicates Philippe Guichard, through, for example, Tracfin, a French agency that works on financial flows. We also have frequent exchanges with, for example, Western Union, a company that allows Westerners [de payer à l’étranger et donc] to buy these footage. We can sometimes go back over several dozen more or less abject exchanges “.

The Paris prosecutor’s office is currently investigating eleven cases. For more efficiency, since last October, it is the only one to be competent in France on the business of “live streaming”. “It is always easier to establish bilateral contacts than to ask a foreign country to establish these contacts with 70 prosecutors in France, asserts Aude Groualle, head of the minors’ section at the Paris prosecutor’s office. “The idea is also, faced with this new phenomenon, complex in terms of collecting evidence, she continues, to allow a public prosecutor’s office to gain expertise on the subject, to forge links with all the interlocutors. “

It is really the ambition of the Paris prosecutor’s office to organize these investigations jointly with foreign countries.

Aude Groualle, head of the minors’ section at the Paris prosecutor’s office

to franceinfo

The Paris prosecutor’s office is increasing partnerships with certain Asian countries to identify and perhaps one day allow compensation for victims, the number of which is unknown.