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In March 2019, a German court convicted four men to sentences between 4 and 10 years in prison for running the online CSE platform ‘Elysium’ on the Darknet. They had set up, administered and moderated what was one of the largest forums of its kind, with more than 11 000 registered users from all over the world. One of the men was also convicted for the sexual abuse of two young children. None of the men involved had known each other in person. The forum had a wide range of different categories of CSEM, including serious violence and very young children.
A man in Sweden was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for forcing children, all under the age of 15, from primarily North America and the United Kingdom to commit sexual acts in front of a camera or webcam. Despite the fact that he was not physically present at the crime scenes, the court nonetheless convicted him as a hands-on offender on the basis of the concept of ‘virtual rape’. It was the first time an online CSE perpetrator had been convicted as a hands-on abuser.