The Liège Criminal Court sentenced on Friday a 27-year-old man to a one-year suspended prison sentence and a €4,000 euro suspended fine for possessing and distributing images of sexual assaults on minors. The defendant claimed to track down paedophiles on the internet but had never reported anything to the police.
The defendant had been caught by the French authorities in the context of an investigation into the actions of another individual.
Investigators had found that the man had exchanged child pornography files via the Skyrock chat room. A search of his home, while he was staying as a student in Liege, had uncovered more than 4,000 illegal files, collected on the internet over a period of two years, between 2018 and 2020.
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Passionate about computers and a lifeguard for the SNSM (national sea rescue society), the defendant had claimed in court that he was also a big fan of the series Criminal Minds, which he claims had inspired him to play a “sheriff” on social networks, but he had never reported any facts to the police.
The court sentenced him to a one-year suspended prison sentence and a 4,000 euro suspended fine.
