In the sluggish heat of August, Théo (whose first name has been changed), a quiet 21-year-old who lived with his parents in the anonymity of a small Normandy town of 1,600 inhabitants, was about to spend another day in front of his computer when the police knocked at his door. Taken into police custody, he was charged and incarcerated two days later for acts that were particularly sordid and rarely seen in someone of his age.
For several weeks, the Evreux prosecutor's office, alerted at the start of the summer by a report from the DGSI, France's domestic intelligence agency, had been investigating Théo's online activities. While working as an apprentice at a local supermarket, Théo had consumed large quantities of child sexual abuse videos and all kinds of gore content.
On his computer, investigators from the Rouen judicial police and the Office for Minors (OFMIN), dedicated to combating serious offenses committed against minors, found more than 2,000 images of child sexual abuse. Among this sickening collection, some videos were described as particularly "unbearable," such as "the rape of babies," which pushed the boundaries of the abject, explained Rémi Coutin, the Evreux prosecutor, to Le Monde. Images of car crashes, mass killings and or animals with their eyes gouged out or decapitated were also uncovered on his hard drive.
