A 32-year-old former teacher was sentenced on Thursday in Belgium to eight years in prison for deceiving around 200 teenagers with two fake female profiles on Facebook, which allowed him to receive sexual photos and videos.
The facts date back to 2017-2018.
The man managed to abuse his own students at a secondary school in Comines-Warneton (west), on the French border.
Most of the victims at the time were between 14 and 17 years old.
The investigation showed that the teacher - now converted to another sector of activity - had managed to contact 400 teenagers from the school, and that sexual exchanges took place with half of them.
The conviction is in line with what the prosecution had demanded during the trial at the end of March before the Tournai criminal court.
On the other hand, the court did not follow the public prosecutor who requested the arrest of the suspect at the hearing.
He remained free after his conviction.
Fake profiles
The suspect, arrested in November 2018, spent eight months in preventive detention under an electronic bracelet before being released under judicial supervision, his lawyer, Lucas Rodriguez, told AFP.
He was sentenced for "
indecent assault
", "
dissemination of child pornography
" and "
cyberpredation
", the latter prevention aimed at having come into contact with minors on the internet by lying about his age or his identity.
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He had created two false profiles under the same name but with two photos of different young women, and to the trapped teenagers he sent to maintain the exchanges of other photos of naked women stolen on the web, explained Me Rodriguez.
The lawyer judged the sentence “
extremely severe
”, noting that his client had “
collaborated from the start with the investigation
”.
"
He accepted the psychiatric follow-up offered to sex offenders and went to 50 consultations, twice a month for more than two years
," added Me Rodriguez, stressing that he would probably appeal the conviction.
For his part Frank Discepoli, lawyer for one of the abused teenagers, welcomed “
a sentence commensurate with the charges
”.
The judgment underlines that the defendant is "
a person marked by perfidy, Machiavellianism, who had an extremely negative attitude on the development of young children and did not realize the gravity of the facts
", declared Me Discepoli to the RTBF channel.
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