Justice
A 27-year-old man from Kontich has been sentenced to seven years in prison for sexual offenses with underage girls.
The man made about forty victims by approaching the girls via Snapchat and using a game to get them to send him nude images and perform sexual acts on themselves. He demanded increasingly extensive images by extorting the victims with images he had already received. The victims were often very young.
It did not stop at obtaining images either. The man met a 14-year-old victim in the parking lot of the youth institution where she was staying and forced her to have sex in a vehicle.
“The facts have been proven and are completely reprehensible, he persuaded numerous very young minor girls to perform sexual acts,” the court said. “The fact that those victims were sometimes scarred for life did not bother him.”
The man himself states that he is not a pedophile, but that young girls are the easiest to influence.
Compensation
The facts became known in 2021 after a complaint from a victim. The man was arrested and after a while in prison placed under electronic surveillance, but during that period he appeared to be contacting underage girls again via social media. He has since undergone therapy, but the court considers this insufficient to guarantee that he will no longer reoffend.
The judge therefore followed the request of the public prosecutor and sentenced the man to seven years in prison and ten years of probation. He must pay tens of thousands of euros in compensation to the victims. He is also deprived of his rights for twenty years. The man was not present in the courtroom, his immediate arrest was ordered.
