12 months for owning child porn

9 March 2007

BRUSSELS – The court in Hasselt has sentenced 57-year-old Jean F. from Beringen to a 12-month suspended prison sentence and a fine of 1,100 euro for possession of child pornography.

The prison sentence is suspended, which means the man will be on probation for the 12-month period. He will have to undergo psychiatric treatment for his sexual deviance and will be deprived of his civil rights for five years.

A search at US internet provider Landslide in 1999 turned up a database containing information on customers who had used a credit card to pay for access to sites with adult and child porn.

The info was passed on to the federal police and it emerged that the Beringen resident had paid for access to child porn sites.

The man’s house was searched on 18 May 2005. The police confiscated three computers and child pornography was found on two of the three. The third computer had belonged to the man previously but was now being used by his daughter.

The police found more than 5,000 pornographic pictures of children on the computers. He had deleted a number of the files. On 15 September 2005 a fourth computer was confiscated in a second search of his home. He had started using this computer after the others were confiscated.

In the short period of three months since the first search and confiscation he had amassed 43,834 pornographic photos of children on his computer. Some had been recently made.

The man actively sought out child porn since 1998. He claims he no longer has any emotional or psychological problems. He asked that his penalty be suspended entirely but the court said that was impossible because of the large amount of photos he had recently collected. The court ruled that he was in need of further treatment.

Subject: Belgian news