2023-04-26 16:46:07
A year in prison was requested on Wednesday at the Dijon Criminal Court once morest the former mayor of Echenon (Côte d’Or), accused of having downloaded more than 10,000 child pornography images.
Dominique Lott, who resigned last December from his post as mayor of the town of around 800 inhabitants, is one of the 48 men arrested in mid-November across France during a vast operation to fight once morest child pornography.
The investigation then uncovered 10,200 child pornography files, downloaded from May 19, 2021 to July 25, 2022, leading to prosecution for acquisition, possession and dissemination of “images of a minor presenting a pornographic character”.
“More than 2,000 download links” were found at his home, as well as traces of “searches on keywords with ages of minors up to 8 years old”, underlined substitute Pauline Fritsch, representing the prosecution. .
“Dominique Lott participated by his behavior in these rapes” of filmed children, she added, underlining the contrast with the function of mayor, who has the quality of judicial police officer.
Ms. Fritsch requested one year in prison, suspended probation over a period of two years. She also requested, among other things, the obligation of psychological care, ineligibility and deprivation of the right to vote for five years, as well as the prohibition of any activity in contact with minors.
“He succumbed to the sirens of the internet”, on the other hand pleaded the defendant’s lawyer, Élodie Mifsud. Presenting her client, not as “the big bad wolf” but as a victim of the “dangers of the internet”, she stressed that he had “believed that it was not so serious” to consult these images, assuring that he didn’t “know” that he was spreading them by uploading them to peer-to-peer file sharing software.
“We did not train the older generations well” in the internet, said Me Mifsud.
“There is no point in denying it,” said the defendant, 63, visibly very embarrassed by the media hype caused by the case. “I did a first download out of curiosity,” he said, later claiming to have been caught in a “gear”
.
“I was like, ‘You’re completely nuts. And I stopped. Then, a few months later, I started once more”, explained this grandfather of several grandchildren aged a few years. “I work with a psychologist,” he added.
Judgment was reserved for May 2 at 1:30 p.m.
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