Teacher Arrested in Seville for Possession of Child Abuse Videos

The National Police have led an international operation against child pornography, resulting in the arrest of 20 individuals, including a teacher practising in Seville. The officers, with the collaboration of Interpol and Europol, have arrested seven individuals in various provinces simultaneously due to suspicions of communication among them.

The detainee in the province of Seville, who also regularly interacted with minors due to his profession as a teacher, possessed images of child sexual exploitation and had access to numerous chats on various platforms dedicated to the exchange of child pornography, according to a police press release.

The remaining arrests, on an international level, have occurred in Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia, the United States, Italy, Portugal, and Bulgaria, with information on 68 other suspects being forwarded to a total of 28 countries.

The arrested individuals used instant messaging groups exclusively dedicated to the trafficking of child sexual exploitation images, and during the searches, six computers, 21 mobile phones, various storage devices, and other electronic devices were seized.

The investigation began when, through cyber-patrolling techniques, the officers detected several instant messaging groups exclusively dedicated to the trafficking of child sexual exploitation images. Once the investigators gathered information that fully identified the alleged perpetrators, the respective countries were alerted to the offences being committed within their jurisdictions.

In Spain, a simultaneous operation was conducted, suspecting that the investigated individuals maintained contact among themselves, resulting in the arrest of seven individuals in the provinces of Barcelona (3), Valladolid, Seville, Murcia, and Jaén. Investigators discovered that one of the detainees, in the Barcelona town of El Masnou, would download the application when he wanted to consume illicit content and subsequently uninstall it to prevent his family from discovering his activities.

Another detainee in the province of Barcelona had contact with minors due to his profession as a healthcare worker, and during the search of his home, it was discovered that in addition to consuming illicit content, he allegedly paid minors from Eastern Europe to obtain sexual images of them.

The arrested individuals, who, due to their professions, regularly interacted with minors in the fields of education and healthcare, have been prohibited from practising their usual work to avoid the evident risk that contact with minors might entail. In addition to the three laptops and 21 mobile phones seized, various tablets, 20 USB drives, three memory cards, a hard drive, two CDs, seven DVDs, a projector, and a game console were intercepted.