“Unbearable photos of very young children”: school leader sentenced for possession and sharing of child pornography images

In November 2024, a man in his thirties was arrested – at the same time as three other men across France – suspected of distributing child abuse images on the encrypted Telegram messaging service, some of which were produced during rapes and sexual assaults. sexual assaults committed against minors around them.

This school leader in Seclin (North) was convicted by the courts on Tuesday January 14. The prosecution had requested three years in prison against the thirty-year-old accused of possession, exchange and recording of around ten thousand child pornography files. He was finally sentenced to three years of imprisonment, including one year under the electronic bracelet regime and two years of suspended sentence, a treatment injunction and a ban on activity in contact with minors.

“Unbearable photos”

Before the magistrates, the man insisted that he had not had sexual relations with a minor, contrary to what he had boasted about online, but he admitted to the detention and sharing of images, indicating that he suffered from addiction to child pornography content since he was 21. The 30-year-old is also banned from using his accounts on various social networks including Telegram for six months.

The judge spoke of “unbearable” photos showing “very young children […] sometimes babies”. The town of Seclin, where he had worked for 20 years as a leisure center leader and guide for children in difficulty, filed a civil suit and obtained a symbolic euro. “When these actions were revealed, it was a trauma”, underlined at the audience the mayor of Seclin, François-Xavier Cadart.