The session
After the criminal case has been completed, according to his lawyer, the suspect must start with “gathering the shards of his abandoned life.” The police judge also visibly has to do with him. “Gosh, well, gosh,” says it after hearing his circumstances.
The high school teacher is suspected of owning a child pornographic video on his phone. Not from a student. Two boys can be seen on the video in question. One holds his own bare genitals. According to the police, they are between eleven and fourteen years old, although it has never been determined who they are and when the recording was made. According to the Public Prosecution Service, that does not matter: the fact that the video was on his phone is enough to prosecute the teacher.
Colleagues caught him on online conversations with one or more students, partly sexually tinted. The messages were handed over to the police by the school. The result was dismissal. And within an hour after his departure there was a statement with the staff that there would be digital sexual cross -border behavior.
“Did you have a special interest in young children?” the judge asks.
“No,” says the teacher. “It came from a friendship that became more and more personal. That should not have been unequal. I was their teacher. That was wrong. But I never did it with wrong intentions.”
But today it is not about these messages. “You are not on trial for that,” says the judge. The incident seems to fit into a broader pattern, but the indictment only revolves around one indictment: possession of that one video.
“What did that video did there?” The judge asks. The suspect explains that he saw a link in the comments under a post of an Instagram model. He clicked on it. The video was automatically downloaded and was then on his phone. “I never thought it could be punishable.”
The teacher says he wanted to talk to colleagues about his messages with students. But he didn’t get that chance. Many of them turned his back on him. “You may not have had that chance at school,” says the judge. “What is the case now?”
The suspect does not know if he will ever want to enter education. It is his passion, he says, to explain things and “make someone better.” But he is afraid that a voice in his head will always say: what will colleagues and students think of you?
The probation service outlines a man who is particularly scared. He is at home without work and income, lives on his savings and takes antidepressants. He hardly comes outside. Yet he tries to work on himself. Every week he follows conversations with a psychologist. There he learns to deal with fear and panic, and with a shock when he reads or hears something about sexual cross -border behavior. The risk that he will go wrong again is estimated to be low, the judge is striking.
The public prosecutor emphasizes that the possession of child pornography is a serious fact. Even though it is one movie. The police estimate the boys between eleven and fourteen, that estimate takes over. “The suspect is a teacher, he should know what guys of that age look like,” the officer says. That the video was in a separate folder, he sees as proof that the man knew it was not allowed. According to the officer, the possession of these types of images maintains the child porn market. She demands a community service of two hundred hours. If he does not carry it out, he must go into jail for a hundred days. In addition, she demands a conditional prison sentence of six months.
The suspect’s lawyer says that there is much doubt about the age of the boys on the video, but also about how the police dealt with his client’s phone. According to him, he would have been searched too deeply. In addition, his client would have been punished enough: dismissal, loss of reputation, social isolation. “His life is in ruins.” He asks the court to suffice with a fine, because that would make the period that the case remains visible on his declaration of behavior (VOG) shorter: not twenty, but ten years.
Judgment
The judge calls the case a difficult file. “We don’t know how old the boys are, nor when the video is made. But when I watch the images, I see two adolescent boys who are sitting. That is different as soon as a genitals comes into the picture.”
The suspect stated that he thought the boy was older. “That is allowed,” the judge says, “but it is about how old he is actually. We have no birth certificate, so it comes to what you see. And I see a young impression. A narrow posture, a boy’s face. I understand the conclusion of the police that this is minors.”
The judge therefore considers it proven that the teacher had child pornography in possession. “That video was on your phone. That means you fall under the penalty provision.”
At the same time, he sees that the man was hit hard by the case. “Your life is pretty in ruins. I am weighing that. I am not going to make this bigger than it is, but also not smaller. We are talking about two dollening teenagers with a sexually charged video. That is not okay.”
The punishment is therefore lower than the requirement. The judge imposes a sixty -hour community service. If it is not executed, the man waits for thirty days in jail.
NEW: Give this article as a gift
As an NRC subscriber you can do every month 10 articles Give a gift to someone without an NRC subscription. The recipient can read the article directly, without a payment wall.