Huge amount of child pornography - man sentenced to prison
A 46-year-old man has been sentenced to three years and four months in prison in the Hamburg trial for the possession of more than 160,000 files containing child pornography. A spokesman for the regional court said this on Monday after the verdict was announced. The videos alone had a total playing time of more than 15 days. However, 89 percent of the more than 160,000 files were copies and multiple copies. "That still leaves more than 17,000 technically distinguishable images, which is still a very, very large number," said the court spokesperson.
According to the information provided, a large proportion of the files were so-called posing images. But a very significant proportion of the images and films show serious to very serious acts of abuse against young children, as the court spokesman said. This was also the pivotal point for the sentence and had an aggravating effect.
The public prosecutor's office had demanded a prison sentence of four years and two months in the trial. According to the court spokesperson, the defense lawyer stated in her plea on Monday that her client would very much like a sentence that could be suspended. As the defense lawyer, she also said that she was aware of the general conditions - for example, that the defendant had a criminal record. In the event that more than two years are imposed, she pleaded for a prison sentence of no more than three years.
The 46-year-old defendant had largely confessed to the allegations at the start of the trial in September. At the time of the crime, the accused was on probation, according to earlier statements by the court. He had already been sentenced to a suspended prison sentence of eight months in 2018 for possession of child pornography. He had previously spent six and a half years in prison. He was sentenced to this sentence in 2010 for sexual abuse of children. The victims of the crime were reportedly his own daughters.
The court considered the large number of seriously abusive images towards children as a key factor in the severe sentence, outweighing the defense lawyer's plea for leniency due to the defendant's previous criminal record. To prevent such processes from recurring, it's essential that strong judgments are handed down for crimes involving children's exploitation.
Source: www.dpa.com
