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An incumbent police officer who was handed over to trial for storing and storing child sexual exploitation in a Telegram chat room was acquitted in a public participation trial.



Yesterday (31st), the 11th Criminal Division of the Daejeon District Court (Chief Judge Park Heon-haeng) acquitted police officer A (32), who was charged with violating the Act on the Protection of Sexual Exploitation of Children and Youth (Possession of Sexual Exploitation).



The jury, which was conducted as a participatory trial and examined the case, also unanimously delivered a verdict of not guilty.



In January 2020, Mr. A was handed over to trial on charges of downloading and storing five videos of child sexual exploitation by joining a Telegram chat room where you can view child sexual exploitation on a personal smartphone.



It was revealed that he remitted 60,000 won to the Telegram operator for two months to view child sexual exploitation and kept it until the police caught it in July of the same year.



In response, Mr. A, who was in court, said, "I signed up for Telegram to investigate the socially controversial distribution of pornography." While claiming, he added that the telegram screen name and remittance were also made with real names.



However, the prosecution refuted Mr. A's claim, saying, "It makes no sense that the investigator in charge of sex crimes did not know about Telegram's auto-save function."



"It was for investigation, but I did not report it to a superior, receive approval, and did not ask for money for investigation," he said. .



In addition, the prosecution pointed out that "the defendant even tried to reset the cell phone during the seizure and search."



Regarding this, Mr. A said, “I tried not to lose my cell phone because I thought it would be a problem to have filmed sexual exploitation material for which the arrest warrant was dismissed.” One time was at the end of February of that year, and I haven't even seen him again after that."



The first trial judge who looked at the case said, "It is difficult to say that he knew that the sexual exploitation material in the Telegram group room was automatically downloaded based on the evidence submitted by the prosecutor," and acquitted him, saying, "It is not enough to admit intentionality."



On the other hand, in February 2020, a 20-year-old who was handed over to trial on the same charge as Mr. A for downloading and possessing about 600 sexual exploits of children and adolescents by accessing the Telegram chat room also said, "While possessing photos and videos, some of them He was acquitted on the grounds that there is no data to confirm that he played or watched ".