Children lured into sexual intercourse, videos shared as trophies

Anton Toni Klančnik. Photo: Bobo

Crime investigators from the Celje, Maribor, Novo Mesto, Koper, Murska Sobota, Kranj and Ljubljana areas conducted 15 house searches today in search of evidence of criminal activities involving the sexual abuse of children and spreading videos of sexual abuse. The police warn that the victims are Slovenian children.

The investigation is a follow-up to a 2015 investigation, when the police was notified about a girl being asked on a date by a stranger via the Internet. Crime investigators later found out that the stranger lured the girl into meeting him and prepared her for sex, which he then recorded and shared on the Internet as a trophy. The investigation then spread from that one case to many other cases across Slovenia.

House searches were conducted by 79 crime investigators and police officers. The operation focused on gathering information and evidence to support reasonable suspicion of criminal acts such as the showing, recording, possession and distribution of pornographic material, informed the General Police Directorate.

The police did not detain anyone but it did seize more than 1,000 pieces of electronic equipment and data storage devices. 30 people were made suspects today. The penalty for owning, producing and spreading pornographic material is 8 years imprisonment.

The victims are Slovenian children
The police warns that the victims in all of the cases are Slovenian children. The perpetrators first present themselves on the Internet to children as peers who understand them. The children then share the most intimate details from their lives with them. Perpetrators abuse this trust and ask the children to undress and perform various deeds in front of camera, which they record. In some of cases the perpetrators even went out on dates during which they forced children into sex-related acts, which they also recorded.

The main goal of the police is to identify the children victims of these acts, and to offer them the help and support they need. As part of these investigations the police has discovered 25 child victims of such abuses, however there are still several children on the recordings which remain unidentified. These kinds of abuses do happen in Slovenia, and so the police calls on everyone with any information about suspected child abuse to immediately report it to the police.

The police also stated that in 2015 it dealt with cases involving 52 child victims, while in 2016 the number increased to 116 children. Last year the police had to deal with 110 such criminal acts. The victims of abuse were children aged between 10 and 17. The majority of victims were girls.

L. L.; translated by K. J.