Court: Couple sexually abused woman’s son

BERLIN — A German court on Tuesday convicted a mother and her boyfriend, a known pedophile, of sexually abus- ing her son beginning when he was about 7, and of selling him to other pedophiles over the darknet, in a case that has shocked the country and raised questions about the government’s failure to protect the boy.

The court in Freiburg found the pair guilty of 40 charges of aggravated sexual assault, including rape, forced prostitution, distribu- tion of child pornography and child endangerment. Both had admitted at the start of the 11-day trial to taking part in sexually abusing the woman’s son, now 10 years old, and to selling him on the dark- net, an area of the internet that is not accessible to most people and is used for ano- nymity and criminal activity.

The man was also found guilty of sexually assaulting a 3-year-old girl.

The woman, 48, was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison and the man, 39, was sentenced to 12 years in jail and to preventive custody after his sentence ends. Several men who paid to assault the boy have also been convicted and on Monday a Spanish court gave one of them a 10-year prison sentence.

The abuse of the woman’s son began in May 2015 and continued until the couple’s arrest in September 2017, when he was taken into state care.

Authorities identified the couple only as Christian L. and Berrin T., who lived in Staufen in keeping with German privacy laws. The man had previously been convicted of fraud and had been found in possession of child pornography, so he was ordered to stay away from children.