Sextortion suspect gets 6.5 years for
online sex abuse of dozens of girls
On Wednesday, the court sentenced 25-year-old Gianni de W. to 6.5 years in prison and institutionalized treatment with conditions for sextortion. The man was charged with the online sexual abuse of 30 girls, including 28 minors. The sentence is slightly lower than what the Public Prosecution Service (OM) recommended.
The authorities linked De W. to 172 victims - 94 underage girls, 40 young women, and 38 victims who were never identified. But the case was limited to the 30 victims who filed a report against him. The OM had demanded 7 years in prison with institutionalized psychiatric treatment - a more severe form than treatment with conditions - against the man.
So, considering there were 30 victims, then De W. got 2.6 months for each life he destroyed. But if you consider there were actually 172 victims, then his sentence is less than 2 weeks for each girl who's life he ruined. Does that seem even remotely fair? Did he get a gold watch as part of the sentence?
The court also convicted De W. of 19 counts of producing child pornography. For eight girls, there was insufficient evidence to prove this. The court sentenced him to five years in prison for the crimes committed as an adult, and 1.5 years for those committed as a minor. He started sexually extorting girls online when he was 14 years old.
According to the court, De W. made his victims' lives a living hell, leaving them feeling powerless and ashamed. As an example of this, the court mentioned one victim who felt such shame that she couldn't come to court and still hasn't informed her parents of what happened to her. He only stopped when he was arrested. De W. also has to pay his victims a total of 91,113 euros in compensation.
De W. made contact with his victims on social media. Under fake names, he offered girls money for sending him nude images. He never paid them, only threatened to distribute their photos if they did not send more. De W. instructed the girls on what to do and how to pose. Some of them had to have sex with another person and film it for him. His victims included his ex-girlfriends and former friends. His youngest victim was 12.
The victims told in court how De W. destroyed their lives. “I couldn’t be a normal child or teenager because of your actions. I was constantly in survival mode,” said the Noord-Holland girl who started this case by going to the police. She sent De W. 9,981 photos and 1.072 videos and went to the police when he threatened to approach her little sister. “You took advantage of my ignorance and made me very scared with your threats,” she said. “You never left me alone. I was harassed 24/7 with messages and phone calls. I had to keep this a secret all these years.”
De W. confessed to sexually extorting the girls online, starting when he was only 14 years old. He apologized in court. “I saw the angry looks and felt the sadness. That really touched me,” De W. said in court, addressing the victims. “I actually don’t understand how I have been able to ignore it all this time. I definitely want to do something about that. I want to come out of this a better person.”
Mental health evaluations showed that De W. has an autism spectrum disorder, borderline personality disorder, and a sexual deviation. According to behavioral experts, he is less accountable. They advised the court to impose institutionalized treatment with conditions on the suspect, a lighter variant of forced treatment. The OM urged against that, saying that this lighter variant of institutionalized treatment can only be combined with a maximum prison sentence of five years. De W. has caused so much pain to so many victims for years that the OM “feels forced to demand a significant prison sentence.”
The court decided to follow the experts' recommendations. It saw a way to impose a longer prison sentence on De W. because the ruling was happening in two parts anyway - one for crimes committed as an adult and one for crimes committed as a minor. The court added that the treatment option could be converted to forced institutionalized treatment if De W. does not cooperate. "Let that be a warning."
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