INTERVIEW. Yves Goethals, head of the child abuse cell: “I don’t look at the abuse in the images, I look for clues” | Interior

Yves Goethals has been hunting perpetrators of child abuse for 23 years. The investigation into Sven Pichal is not conducted by his cell, but it is he and his team who trace and analyze images of child abuse every day. “The youngest suspect I had was 18, the oldest 92. We have even had to arrest people from our own police circles.” How do they find the perpetrators at the offline and online child abuse cell of the Federal Police? How do they view and analyze such terrible images there? And what does that do to a person?