At least 13 of those arrested have a previous criminal record and were on the national sex offender register. The suspects are predominantly male, with only one woman, suspected of watching the illicit videos alongside her partner, among those taken into custody. The demand for child pornography in France has grown amid the anti-coronavirus lockdown, Berot noted.
The arrests came after a months-long investigation into a large group that produced and distributed child porn online through peer-to-peer networks. The police have seized a large quantity of computers, and hard and USB drives, as well as other electronic devices. Investigators are still digging through the data, Berot said.
At least three of the suspects are believed to have been personally involved in raping minors on camera. One of the suspects, said to be a computer scientist, has admitted to having regularly assaulted his own 14-year-old daughter since she was nine, Berot revealed. Officers discovered an enormous cache of more than 110,000 illicit images and some 2,000 child pornography videos on his computer.
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