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Approximately 4% of the population has a pedophilic attraction. Seeing children being raped on a daily basis, well, that has an impact. The mother received a 17-year prison sentence, knowing that the maximum is 20 years. In this video, you're going to present two investigations. You have a first investigation which will concern someone who will make contact with minors to try to obtain content. So minors will end up getting naked and then engaging in sexual acts towards themselves or potentially with other people. The second case will involve an adult who was naked with two young teenage girls. So we were able to identify him.
It was a couple who lived there with a 3-year-old child who was being abused, and this had been going on for weeks. Today, we have an appointment at the gendarmerie and more specifically at the national judicial police unit. We are in the premises of the National Center for Analysis of Child Sexual Abuse of the National Cyber Unit. We're going to meet Régis who analyzes these horrible images with the aim of protecting the victims and stopping the predators. There is a victim who has filed a complaint. A young boy who had been hooked up on Skype. How old was he? 12 years old. Thankfully, in the end, he went and told his parents, "Damn, I did something stupid, I got naked and then I sent the pictures to
someone." Fortunately, he had that good reflex. So, they went to file a complaint, the local unit took it into account, they are the gendarmerie, they started to identify the person involved who was in contact with him, who had forced him to get completely naked and send photos of him. When the suspect was arrested, and they looked at his computer, they realized that there wasn't just this kid, there were many others in their sector and also a little bit everywhere in France. and he had about, we were in the 500 Skype contacts on one of the Skype conversations in that case, a young girl who was exchanging messages with him and in the end, the guy heard behind the voice of a little boy. So he says, "Well, who is it?" He said, "Well, that's my little
brother, it was in the middle of the night." And he said, "Oh well, go get him and then you take care of him." OK? She said "Well no, a no" but he ended up scaring her, putting pressure on her. So she gets up, opens her bedroom door and there she runs into her dad. He said to her, "Well, what are you doing?" She says, "Well no, but I was going to the bathroom." Then she goes back to her room. So she waited, her dad went back to bed, she went to get her little brother and unfortunately, she did everything the guy asked her to do and she masturbated her little brother. She was 10 years old. You should know that in France even if you are only on the other side, you only told her that she has to do that. If
it is under duress, and therefore when it is a minor, it is under duress, then it is recognized as rape. So that person was arrested. So what was the outcome? It was primarily the analysis of all these Skype conversations that was carried out at our level. Locally, yes, they analyzed, well, there is a psychological expertise of the person to find out why he does this. The goal is to understand what led him to contact minors. This person has been convicted, he is not yet fully convicted because in the end, he has a small sentence in relation to one of the facts, but there are still a whole bunch of cases because as I was telling you, there are more than 500 victims. But
ultimately, we continue to work on this case because we don't want to leave the other victims behind. So, we continue to analyze the content to try to identify these victims. The case will not be time-barred since it occurred after the victim reached the age of majority. So we are still able to work on this content in order to identify these victims. If unfortunately there were only discussions, then what we call grooming or pedopiéage, or in the end, well, it's the somewhat vague phase. There has been no concrete action taken. That's it, and that's ultimately when you're in the phase where it's just discussion. For example, we had kids who were on Coco. For example, Coco is a site that creates
controversy. And for good reason, the platform has just been shut down by order of the Paris prosecutor's office. Last April, 11 men were tried for having sexual relations with a 13-year-old girl. And there, you had guys opposite you who were there. Seriously, what are you doing here? It's dangerous. There are plenty of pedophiles. Go to the meeting. That's it. You have the role of the educator who wants to say "No, be careful what you do on the internet." Some people who don't care at all, in fact, all they're interested in is thinking about talking to a minor only to unfortunately end up masturbating in front of them. Approximately 4% of the population has a pedophilic attraction, not
necessarily sexual, but finds a child beautiful. That doesn't mean he'll act on it or want to assault the child or want them to have sexual relations, but he just thinks the child is beautiful. Is it considered an illness or a sexual deviance like any other? So it's a paraphilia. So it's not an illness in the sense that we all understand it because there are no medications. And so that's also why it's difficult to prevent the person from doing it again. And it's not considered a crime to ask minors for photos. When you go to ask for the photo, yes, but the whole approach phase before where you're just chatting, in the end, well, that's part of freedom of expression. This is the
problem that arose with Damien Viv, the comic book director. The 41-year-old cartoonist is being tried until Wednesday for recording and transmitting images of a pedopornographic nature for distribution. The two albums at the heart of the debates are " Mental Discharge," which talks about a man having sexual relations with underage girls, and "Little Paul," which features a child with an oversized penis having sexual relations with adult women. Where were we in the art world? Where were we in the pedophilia case? There are also plenty of photographic artists where the photos are slightly oriented and in fact all this blurring is between freedom of expression, artistic expression and other things. For us, in order to be able to judge, we
unfortunately need something a little more, so even just the request for the photo, even if the child is not going to send it, we are already on concrete ground, or the request for a meeting where the guy says well yes, we will meet at such and such a place, I will bring you some money, I will say ah you don't have an iPhone, well I will pay for the latest iPhone then we will meet at such and such a place then we will go for a walk and we may have sexual relations. There, indeed, we have concrete evidence and it will allow us to be judged, but unfortunately, the whole scene just before, well, it's not easy to be able to concretely demonstrate that the person was going to go to that point.
Do the platforms collaborate easily with you? So, they will respond quite easily because already all American service providers have a legal obligation to transmit everything related to offenses against minors to the NEMC. So this is the National Center for Missing and Exploit Chinrun. So it's an organization that will centralize all this information, that will work with federal and local agencies and that will transmit all the elements to the local authorities of the country concerned also when it is outside the USA. A video that will be sent to a WhatsApp channel because you have that too. You have people who receive a video saying "Oh, watch out, it's awful, there's a child being raped," and then they
go and spread it around to everyone saying, " Watch out, this video is circulating." This should be avoided; you should just make a report saying, "Well, there is this, but at Meta," so in the end what will happen is that they will forward it to Neckmec, who will check the country of origin of the first report and forward it to the competent authorities. So if they do n't do it in the end and the American authorities are aware that something is going on, the company will receive a fine that is so large that as a result they won't just help you, they will help you. Are you also linked to adult pornography sites to sometimes have videos removed?
The processing that has been done is mainly via Interpol Europol where they will discuss with the major platforms. However, you have companies that have contacted us directly, for example X video, to ask if they could provide us with information concerning suspicious users on their site who were transmitting content. So sometimes it's not necessarily actually minor, but for them it can be minor in relation to the visual aspect because even though you only have the visual aspect, there is still a desire to do something. So we are true on the phase we on the other hand on the content as such involving a minor is not on the phase of access to pornography to minors which needs to be protected also because unfortunately when a minor is educated
on sexuality only with porn sites we see what that leads to. We realize that there are more and more videos with names like incest, my stepdaughter, my stepfather, and ultimately it's more or less about that, and ultimately kids are being educated with that now, let's say it's just the text, it's not necessarily the case in real life, but behind it includes, well, all the psychology that goes behind it, it's downplaying, let's say, incest and other things, and so the impact on kids who are being educated with that is really limit access for minors. Not just in relation to the visuals, you also have in relation to all this terminology that is used which will downplay something which is not logical.
You have two entities at the department level that reach people. The National Cyber Unit Operations Division, which is the national center for the analysis of child pornography images. We will receive the photos and videos that are seized by local units, police and gendarmerie, in order to analyze this content to identify the victims so that they are not abused again. And you have a repression group of investigators who are currently specializing in offenses against minors. Their goal is to identify child sex trafficking networks. to work on it to take down the networks. Well, Coco for example, it was our unit that worked on it in order to be able to take down those networks. After that, we managed to gain
international recognition, and therefore to get involved with Europol and Interpol. So, we must be about twenty terras in Europol's database of child pornography content. Yeah. Often on social media, we see that many people, influencers and even non-influencers, show their children on social media, little ones, even at birth, there are videos of births. What would you like to say to those people who show their children on social media? I can understand that, it is indeed practical for sending grandparents or others the child's progress. I did it with mine, but when you go on Insta, TikTok or something else and everyone can access it, it's dangerous.
Pedophiles will get hold of that content. For some, just seeing a dressed-up child can excite them, but now what's happening more and more is that we have AI here now. So artificial intelligence is great, it helps us with a lot of things. There are some AI software programs that can allow you to also expose people from these photos of children that are taken on the internet and the children will be tiny. So, you're advising parents not to put anything on their children ? Put nothing in, avoid faces, and otherwise, well, ultimately, really restrict their network. All parents have their child's picture taken in the bath to send to the grandparents and then you have to be careful about the way they broadcast them. So, is
banning social media for younger people a solution? I don't think that's a real solution because unfortunately we know very well how things go with a child. When you forbid him from doing something, he will want to do it because he has real control. Yes. So yes, there are systems that are being put in place. For example, you have Yubo, which has an app for exchanging between teenagers. They have a real age control in place with facial arch at their level. So it's not, it's not a recou as such. So there is no "you don't have" but they will verify that the face is indeed a real face with a video and so you have the identity document so it is compared everything is compared and they are able to determine if you are in the
age range which corresponds or not to enter the application. Completely forbidden, that way it will never work. Children need to be educated, in fact. That's his way. Yeah, in a way it's about educating children, and parents too, about the real risks. Yes, indeed, there are people who will want to get in touch with their children. It's like when you're teaching your child how to cross the street. We're going to teach him about the dangers. He shouldn't be talking to just anyone, he shouldn't get into a car with someone he doesn't know. Well, it's exactly the same on the internet.
You, who have children and are aware of everything that's going on, what do you tell them to make them pay attention to all this? When he was little, well, I told them that there were people on the internet who were dangerous because, well, they had bad ideas about children. So when they talk to someone, they want to be sure it's really their classmate, or later when they're older, they play online on different networks like GTA or others, because even if it's forbidden for minors or from a certain age group, we know that kids still want to play it. The computer was in the room, so we were paying attention to what was going on there as well. But afterwards it was mainly about explaining to them that there are risks. So if you see
someone asking you questions that bother you, tell me right away. And then later, as they grew up, I went into more detail. I told them clearly, well, there are people who want to abuse children or who want to see children completely naked or at most. If someone asks you for a photo, that's out of the question. If someone asks you where you live, well, you tell them to go to hell and clearly, they know what I do and they know the real risks involved. Then people will tell me, "Yeah, but they're boys so it's easier, he's not risking anything." No, he risks just as much because, well, whether it's boys or girls, unfortunately, well, it attracts attention. But on the other hand, well, it was more about education, about why
I was telling them to be careful. So we need to take that into account. They're going to play online, but you never know who you're up against. So it's necessary that the parents take an interest in them Yeah. Then your son says, "Yeah, I want to be on Fortnite." At first you'll say, "Yeah, what is it?" And there you go, you're going to watch. Yes. Well, apparently, there's nothing wrong with it. But when you know that in fact, yes, there are people who are on it, well they are even on Fortnite, there are people who are everywhere. Cannot target a specific network. From the moment they are able to get in contact either with other pedophiles or with minors, yeah.
Well, they'll be there. Sometimes girls, for example, will send nudes to their boyfriends, except that sometimes there is a breakup and arguments. The young man pressured the girl, saying, "Well, there you go, I'm going to distribute your picture all over the middle school and high school." It's true that sometimes, out of shame, a girl or a boy might also decide to commit suicide. Oh well, it can go very, very far. Yes, it can unfortunately mean continuing to go further and always responding to the person's request. And it can also be because he feels completely locked up, that he messed up, did something he shouldn't have, and he doesn't dare talk about it, and so he will completely isolate himself both in the
family bubble and even at school or elsewhere. For the girls concerned, how should they react? The first thing to do is file a complaint. Even if they did something stupid, in quotes, because they shouldn't be ashamed, because by saying, well, I did something stupid, OK, I sent a nude photo, I shouldn't have, it's not, it's not good, but there you go, it's already, in quotes, good when it's just to someone they know really because unfortunately we have cases where it's someone who pretends to be the online boyfriend, who pretends to be a friend of a friend or who pretends to be a mankina agency or something, there's that too. But even if it's
someone who is not easily identifiable because it's a pseudonym to discuss with, we will always have ways to investigate in order to identify them. So don't think that because it's online, we can't do anything. She needs to talk to her parents about it. We need to talk about this right away. Either to her parents, or an adult she knows well in her family circle, the marine godfather, so that the complaint is filed immediately, so that the content is also seized on the guy's devices. We will also need this photo to be able to help him because we are going to integrate him into an international database and so we know who he is. So this database is only accessible by our investigators, our counterparts. But the advantage is that if any
content comes out that will also concern her, we will know right away What is this second case about? So the second case was within the framework of a Europol task force. So this case ultimately involves data that was seized on the Darknet. The Task Force colleague realized that it was pointing towards France in the video. In fact, they recognized it. Is that it? Yeah. They found some objects that could indeed be French, and so we were able to determine that it was in France. The content showed an adult who was naked with two young teenage girls. There were sexual breaks. So those were the only elements we had at that time. So, in the end, it was 6am. It was a couple who lived there with a 3-year-old child.
It was unclear whether the woman in the couple was involved or not. So the prosecutor said, "Well, you put both of them in custody." So this little boy is 3 years old. So in fact, we spent an hour with a colleague chatting with this little boy who spoke incredibly well for his age. So afterwards, he was taken into the care of social services. And what happened was that we had a colleague from Europol who was present to analyze the content as well. We had two Ntech, so our investigators specializing in analysis, knowledgeable about computers, phones, they collect the computers, the phones, they analyze all of that. And in fact at 6pm, my colleague from Europol said to me, "Regis, come and see." And finally, he shows me a video of
this little boy being abused, and it was from weeks before. So there's the whole psychological impact, as you were saying, of thinking, "Damn, we took too long to put together the case because of us, this boy was raped and abused by his parents." Yeah. And then, uh, "Damn, we messed up, it's our fault." And finally, my colleague told me, "No, but wait, because we have other videos anyway. In the end, for these 3 months, this little boy was being abused by his parents." So, we have this whole delay. So at that point, we think, "Okay, fine." So there is a whole procedural change there however because we are moving into criminal matters with acts involving the mother because we had videos implicating her as well. But
in the technical analysis, we also saw that they were both abusing another niece. We had two nieces who were involved as victims, and the little boy as well. It's crazy to think that this isn't necessarily the profile of a fifty-year-old alone in his room. It could also be a default couple. There aren't a huge number of women involved. Generally, it's not women who are alone, it's actually going to be women in a relationship. Their line of defense for many will be that they are being manipulated by their men or are under the control of men. Then, there are some, it's
because they have an interest too. They have this attraction because it's not only men who have physical attractions towards minors. For everyone to think that a mother would do something to a child is unthinkable, but unfortunately there are many cases of women who are aggressors and women who abuse children. So we know how long the parents were sentenced to prison. The mother received a 17-year prison sentence, knowing that the maximum is 20 years, and the father received a 19-year sentence. So we are still dealing with a judgment that was quite significant, consistent with what they did. Of course,
without necessarily going into details. How do you force a 3-year-old child? It's what? Well, in the end, you don't force him because, as he started when he was 6 months old, it's his habit to perform a sexual act on his parents. For him, it's consistent; it's for him. It makes sense that his mom would do something to his penis. That's normal, it's his habit. To tell you how much it was, when he was placed in foster care, this little boy's custom to say goodnight was a kiss on the mouth and a kiss on the penis. So ultimately now, there is a whole psychological process underway with this boy to make him understand that he is not responsible for this, but no, we don't do that. In fact, they destroyed a life.
Potentially, he will be able to pull through. I myself have had the chance to meet victims in the United States who have managed to have a completely coherent life afterwards, even having a married life, having children and everything is going very well for them. So there is hope, this boy is not completely ruined. It's going to take him a long time. How much time can pass between discovering a predator and the intervention of the gendarmerie or police forces? It will depend on whether we have enough elements to be able to trigger a local arrest or it will also depend on the dangerousness of the individual or the contextual elements that he is actually in contact with children in a sphere where he can access
children. So it can indeed unfortunately take, well, 6 months, 1 year. We have a problem that is emerging now, however, it's young people aged 16 to 20 who, instead of selling drugs because drugs are dangerous, at some point you have to send the package or travel. So now what they're doing is they're going to sell content. They retrieve images or they themselves request images, they blackmail, they will retrieve them either on the dark web, or by downloading because what is even worse still works and in the end they will sell these links. We already have cases involving this where we have taken down a network. What could have possibly done that?
It's about possession, distribution, of content. It's going to be a 5-year prison sentence. But already, there is this signal that is also being sent: attention, stop doing that. There's a lot of communication about what we're doing. That's why we don't go too far in explaining our ability. That's why you're remaining a bit vague. So. Because otherwise, in the end, they will use it because they know very well. They follow the judgments, they follow the investigations or they talk amongst themselves. When the guy gets caught, he 'll say, "Yes, I got caught because of that." So the others will get up to speed and say, "Watch out, we need to protect ourselves."
Online predators give advice on how to trap children. Well, they give each other advice on how to approach a kid, especially for those who want to move on to physical contact and sexually abuse children. For them, it's not aggression, it's education, it's beneficial for the child. They all have this advice precisely to prevent the child from filing a complaint. So it's also going to involve the use of medication. What medication is given to children for what age? Because you still have to be careful, it would be a shame if the child died or else it will be the use of specific medications, be careful about that, be careful also about the traces we can
leave either online or also physically to avoid being detected, avoid being identified. You are confronted with this kind of child pornography on a daily basis. How do you take a step back from all of this? I'm just correcting you on the term; we'll avoid saying pedopornographic. We're going to talk about child pornography or sexual content exploiting minors in a way that avoids it because, ultimately, there's nothing pornographic about it because there's nothing good in it. These are children who are being raped, who have been abused. So, we tried to put that in place. We are working to change things at the French level, at the international level.
Since 2016, there has been a terminology that has been put in place in English, translated into the official languages as well. So this is how to change this because, well, it's disgusting. The advantage we have, in quotes, is that it's ugly to say it like that, but it's that we know we're going to be confronted with this content, compared to a colleague who is in the field where, in the end, we'll tell him, "It's already happened to me, I found this key when I was moving into my house, I looked at what's on it, it's disgusting," and in the end, the colleague will plug in the key, he'll have children being raped, he doesn't expect it, or on drug cases, and then in the end, in the content of the phone,
when they exploit it, they realize that there are children being raped too. Our advantage, in quotes, is that we know it. So we prepare ourselves psychologically for that and we're not going to focus on what's actually happening. We're just going to check. Yes, it's minor. Yes, there is a sexual act. So, we are within the legal framework to be able to work. And ultimately, we will look at everything else in order to identify this child and prevent him from being abused again. What do you think of the videos where you sometimes see pedophiles being beaten up by people taking justice into their own hands A Belgian man beat up his neighbor, a suspected pedophile. After several days on the run, he surrendered to the police.
You don't touch the children anymore, do you? You're going to touch my son again, you [__] pedophile. The problem is that, in any case, you can't take justice into your own hands Those who are going to carry out the beating deserve to be judged and brought to court because unfortunately that's what it is. First of all, they're not even sure that the person they're talking to is really a pedophile. Secondly, they didn't suffer anything. So in the end, there isn't really any justice. And for some, it's just a justification to go and beat people up or to steal their phone or steal money or get something back. I can understand that people want to help
identify pedophiles so that they can be brought to justice. Unfortunately, the methods are not the right ones because most of these victims, well, we're not even aware of them, so they won't be monitored, and that's why it could be a real pedophile who abused children who will either commit suicide, so we won't know about these victims, they won't be taken into account, recognized as victims, or well, in the end, he will disappear and we will never be able to catch him. There are associations that will track them down by pretending to be kids online and then report them to the magistrate. I'm not particularly in favor of it either because ultimately we don't know what their working methods are
. They do not have all the necessary elements to ensure that the case can then proceed properly to court. It's going to be shaky and as a result, unfortunately, the procedure could break down and not succeed. The guy will be released and then, well, he 'll protect himself. Acting like that could prevent him from being properly judged and then being detected for more serious offenses. If you are only interested in this file, you will not analyze the content sufficiently and you will not check if you potentially have photos of him abusing a child or you will not check if he is in the vicinity of children and if he has potentially assaulted children.
These are files that are arriving. OK? We have guys who are detected for possession of content and then when the work is sufficiently thorough beforehand and then during police custody, we manage to determine that there have indeed been sexual assaults. Let's put it bluntly. There are people who will watch the YouTube video and want to report a behavior. There, they listen to our video, our speech, and he says, "Ah well yes, I have someone in mind who has been problematic. How can they act now?" You have three distinctive features. So it will indeed be Pha for everything contained within Answering the questionnaire, that's what it's basically about. Yeah, you have to answer the questionnaire. After that, you can be
anonymous and all that, there's no problem if people are afraid of being detected. Then there's the My Security app which will also be guided. There's the digital brigade that can also track these elements - then you have a point of contact. So there is a civil association we are in partnership with them where it could also be your victims who ultimately have their content that has been taken. They can also go to the contact point and they can also be guided on how to try to have this content removed online. You've been doing this job since 2008.
Is child pornography content increasing on social media? Is it stagnating? Is it decreasing? Is this changing? How do you see this trend today in 2025? You will have more of the content itself that will be broadcast. There is an increase in the volume of content that is broadcast because you effectively have more capacity to broadcast. There are not necessarily more children who are raped, nor more victims. There are not necessarily more victims. The only unusual aspect, unfortunately, from a specific point of view, is that it is easier to access this content and therefore to identify its victims. Because before, what was happening was
that the child was being raped; there was no content. So we never knew. As long as no one filed a complaint, as long as no mark was made on the person, we could never know. In itself, it has always existed, but today there is concrete evidence. It has always existed. Even before that, what was happening was that they were printing photos and videos in magazines when it wasn't completely illegal yet. You had magazines that were printed with mankina, modeling, and children. They were doing this under the table. They would go to sex shops and then you had a hidden section where guys would put ads in newspapers saying this has always existed because, well, it's a sexual deviance that has always been there. The only thing is that
now it's online. So for us it has this advantage, which is that potentially we can identify more easily because we will have content. So it's unfortunate because the child was indeed raped, but in a way it was already the case. The only special thing is that now we have a way to access this crime scene and be able to work on it to identify this child to prevent this from continuing. What does a typical day look like for you Well, it'll just be a quick coffee to chat with the team, find out how things are going, how they're doing today. Well, of course, there shouldn't be one who isn't in good shape so that we can, well, preserve them. The
investigators will be working on their ongoing case, trying to make progress. Does anyone need a hand with this file to make sure the file goes faster? Each person has one or two cases to manage as an investigation director. But on the other hand, what we're going to avoid is him being all alone because otherwise he'll be overwhelmed, he wo n't be able to do what's necessary and then, well, the analysts have 6 hours a day processing images and videos. Reg, we're in your office here, we can see there are quite a few plush toys, Bart, the Simpsons, Stitch. Why is there this slightly childish feel to your office?
Well, it's kind of our way of unwinding. There are also some plush toys that we see. Well, it's the Europol or Interpol plush toys or some foreign counterparts that do that too. It felt good sometimes to take a break. Yeah, that's it. So, in fact, I had something else to watch that was less stressful. And so, we got into the habit of adding a little more. We avoid having too much of it though, because well, it's still a workspace, but it's actually the point on which we can focus quietly, which allows us to relieve our minds. Have you and your colleagues ever sought psychological help to gain perspective on all of this?
Yes. So we have a psychological support system in place. So we have individual follow-up once a year and then we have group follow-up about once a quarter where we discuss everything and then it may be following an operational case. So, regarding the case with the little boy, we held a debriefing with all the investigators involved to review the case, what each of them was doing, and specifically this phase of discovering the boy's rapes. You see, there are colleagues, for example, who were part of the local unit and aren't used to this kind of follow-up. They usually do other things besides discovering corpses, they do other things because it's their daily routine, and ultimately, when they did this follow-up, they said, "Ah
yes, indeed, it was always on my mind. If you keep it bottled up too much, the problem is that one day it's going to snap. We're human, after all. Seeing children being raped every day, well, it has an impact." Have you ever had a breakdown when you got home Well, yes, there are times when it's difficult. Well, in the end, we're going to unwind, we're going to do some sport. Okay, not at your level, but we're going to run a little, we're going to relax, we're going to chat because well, you need to unwind. There was an evaluation done in England, for example, when you watch shocking content, whether it's or road accidents, for example, people who are addicted, the ideal way to avoid the impact for you is to
play your games right after or games of that kind because in the end it will allow you to limit the impact and the retention in your head of those videos. We know we still have them because, well unfortunately, when I look at files, I can say, well, this victim, I've already seen, this has been identified, this is in such and such a country because, well, it's in my head but I close my eyes, I don't have the photos that come to mind. So is there but it's preserved, let's say. And here at the national cyber unit, how many of you process images on a daily basis? So at the national cyber unit level, we have three analysts, two or three staff to process content for the police and gendarmerie, and we have five
investigators to work on tracking down pedophile networks. It gives the impression that there aren't many of us. So we have, however, the network of antennas of the national cyber unit both in metropolitan France and overseas. We have approximately 10,000 people who have been trained. So that gives you a fairly large volume of people to be able to manage this cyber thread. So this allows us to have trained people with whom we exchange information regularly. So those who have the same technical capabilities as our investigators are in communication with us. They have means of transmitting content that are trained in analysis as well in order to be able to determine as quickly as possible if in
the content they are going to have it can concern the involvement of the victims locally. Régis, if there are young people watching this video right now who would like to do the same job as you, how can they go about it So to get in now, there is a cybersecurity specialization, but you have to go through the traditional curriculum. They will be forced to go to school, they will be forced to do obstacle courses, military training, Saintastier training. Then there are predispositions indeed, people who are quite interested in cyber. So how did you end up doing this job? and I have a baccalaureate in optics, I have a BTS in automation so yes, there is a little bit of a link because there is computer science involved. I
left school and found myself in a mobile gendarmerie squadron. I arrived at René Sousbo in the transmission center so I was managing messages. So yes, indeed, there was computer science involved and then well, I got my diploma as a judicial police officer and I was with some cyber guys and I said hey, that looks interesting because actually it's because I exchanged ideas with them. And in the end, when I applied, they told me there's only one place, it's at the national center for the analysis of child pornography images. So, at the beginning, the question is, what is this? What are we talking about? And in the end, well, I started there and then I thought, well, I want, I don't want to do anything else, you know.
Reg, do you feel useful through your actions, your profession? Initially, when I started in 2008, I felt like I was lost in the crowd or I was all alone, and at the time it was mostly photos. Then you have the videos coming, so that 's even worse. And in the end, well, the famous files that we managed to produce, the international recognition of our capabilities too, because participating in this ASP means that we have recognized work capabilities. So all of this also allows you to feel useful and legitimate. So. Well, this little boy, who unfortunately, even though he had already been raped, well, we still managed to prevent it from continuing.
It's a small victory every time. Who has a case that has personally affected you A guy on the Darknet who was finally starting to want to act on a young girl and he was asking for advice so he was in the preparation phase so there was never anything on this girl and we managed to intervene before and brought her to justice before he acted. Afterwards he chose to commit suicide so the case is closed but in the end this young girl was completely preserved. She's not even aware that he had those intentions. The closure of Coco, well, it's a victory because, well, the closure of this site has put a stop not only to attacks on minors, but also to drug trafficking and physical assaults on adults.
It served some purpose. If there are people who watch the video and feel that they have this deviance and this attraction to children, what can we tell them? Are there any websites to help them, apps, or phone numbers to call? So, you have lots of associations, but in particular the stop system, so there is a hotline, it is totally anonymous and it will allow them to be guided and helped precisely to avoid this acting out, to be followed, to help psychologically to restrict themselves, to contain themselves. It's completely anonymous. There will be no report to the police or law enforcement, but it is really about preventing the act from happening. It's to avoid this acting out because you have some who feel bad about it,
who know they shouldn't, and so it's complicated for them too. Potentially, we have a pedophile criminal or someone who might want to deviate, who might even contact the services on their own saying I need help. You have this device which will help them to remain in a state of blockage and not to act. Do you have a message for the children, for the parents who will be watching this video? That's what we've been saying from the beginning, it's all about dialogue. Even if the child thinks he has done something wrong, well, talk to the parents about it, well, try to listen. Indeed, there are times when we ask ourselves, "Is it true or is it not true?" Young people, when you've done something wrong, especially talk about it. It's
better to get a scolding than to go further and unfortunately end up dying because when you're completely locked up and you don't know how to get out, unfortunately, those are the risks that happen to some. Thank you Régis for this testimony and I hope that the video we made today will be able to help as many people as possible. That was the goal.
