A man from the Danish island of Bornholm has confessed to being the mastermind behind a huge Scandinavian language paedophile network on the dark web.
Over a four-year period, the 33-year-old – who cannot be named for legal reasons – used the anonymous Tor network to share thousands of indecent images and videos of children. The secretive forum, which was hidden behind layers of encryption, could only be accessed by members who could speak a Scandinavian language – either Danish, Swedish or Norwegian.
On the first day of his trial, the man “partially” admitted running the DanBB page, prosecutor Pernille Munch told local paper Ekstra Bladet.
As well as operating DanBB, the suspect is also accused of working as an administrator on another child abuse site on the dark web. The Love Zone, a global paedophile network run by one of Australia’s most notorious paedophiles Shannon McCoole, was used by many thousands of child sex abusers around the world before it was shut down in 2014.
McCoole was jailed for 35 years in 2015 for running the site, which ranked members based on the “originality” and volume of the child abuse material they posted online. McCoole was also convicted of sexually abusing at least seven minors while working as a childcare assistant. The youngest of his victims was 18 months old.
Last year, Norwegian state broadcaster NRK uncovered another dark web child abuse forum exclusively intended for a Scandinavian audience. On its front page, the site told users: “Welcome to Scandi Land. This forum is a Scandinavian discussion forum for paedophiles, hebephiles and all other who wish to participate in the debate. All are welcome, however, it is a requirement that users type in a Nordic language. English is not allowed.”
Danish police said they recovered 56,594 indecent images of children and 3,174 illegal video sequences on the Bornholm man’s computers and hard drives, but suggested the total number of pictures and clips he distributed could well have been much higher.
If found guilty of the “systematic or organised dissemination of child pornography”, the man could face up to two years in prison – a sentence people living in other parts of the world might balk at. Most Scandinavian countries’ courts hand down what many would consider to be unduly lenient sentences for extremely serious crimes.
Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik was handed a 21-year jail term for killing 77 people in his 2011 twin terror attacks on Utøya Island and Oslo. Despite their soft-touch approach to justice, Scandinavian countries’ prisons have some of the lowest rates of recidivism in the world, and have developed a reputation for successfully rehabilitating offenders.
