Overview

• A 75-year-old man from Landkreis Gießen was detained on July 24 by Hessian police under suspicion of instigating sexual abuse of 5- to 11-year-olds in the Philippines via internet and possibly in person.
• A tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children led authorities to discover more than 13,000 suspicious images and videos stored in the suspect’s cloud account.
• Agents from the HLKA’s specialized FOKUS unit searched the suspect’s home, seizing eight smartphones, two tablets, three cameras and multiple storage media.
• The suspect was brought before an investigative judge at Amtsgericht Frankfurt, who issued an arrest warrant and ordered pretrial detention.
• Hessian prosecutors and police are cooperating with international partners to map the full scope of the transnational child exploitation network.