France’s Supreme Council of the Judiciary has dismissed a judge in Dijon who has been indicted for allegedly asking men on a “libertine” website to sexually abuse his 12-year-old daughter.
The decision to remove the judge from his post was made earlier this week by the Supreme Council of the Judiciary and comes just over a year after the judge was indicted for allegedly offering his underage daughter for sex to random men on the internet.
The incidents are said to have taken place between October of 2019 and May of 2020, while an investigation into the judge’s behaviour began in January of 2020, France Info reports.
The case was not investigated in Dijon but was instead handed over to the public prosecutor’s office in Besançon in order that the judge was not being investigated by his own peers.
Searches of the home and offices of the judge were later carried out in June of last year and ruled out any involvement of the man’s wife, who had been under investigation in the case prior to the raids.
Étienne Manteaux, the prosecutor of Besançon, stated that the judge claimed the online messages were mere “fantasies” and that no evidence of any actions beyond the messages had been found — but the judge had allegedly sent pictures of his daughter in a bathing costume to others.
Last month, authorities called on the Supreme Council of the Judiciary to dismiss the judge from his post, arguing that “this magistrate has lost all legitimacy to enforce the law.”
Child prostitution has become a major issue in parts of France in recent years, with a French Central Office for the Suppression of Human Trafficking (OCRTEH) report published in February revealing that the number of children exploited by sex traffickers had increased 600 per cent from 2014 to 2020.
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