Stolen innocence: online predator jailed 21 months

The first sentence in what has been dubbed ‘the biggest paedophilia case in Faroese history’ has been handed out.

A 58-year-old man was yesterday given a 21-month prison sentence in the Court of the Faroe Islands.

The case involves 16 children aged 10-17, who have been subjected to various degrees of sexual grooming on social media.

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The 58-year-old man was charged with approaching children through Snapchat and subsequently using the Xrecorder screen recording app to record and save non-consensual images of the children.

According to the indictment, he claimed to be a young man, in some cases 14 years old, and persuaded the children to send him compromising images of themselves.

The case involved 427 images and video clips, 318 of which were deemed to be child pornography. Nine of these recordings were shared with others.

The man pleaded guilty to the charges against him.

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Police have arrested two other men and charged them with sexual exploitation of children.

One of the men was arrested as he arrived at Vágar Airport on his way to meet a child he had befriended on social media. As the man resides in Denmark, this case was handed over to Danish police for further investigation.

The other man was not related to this particular grooming case; however, police investigations revealed that he had on numerous occasions had sexual intercourse with a child younger than 15 at the time of the offence. This relation also began on social media.

This case was investigated separately, and the man was handed a seven-month prison sentence on 4 September this year. The verdict has been appealed to the High Court.

Read the Faroese version of this article here.

More Faroese News in English.