German prosecutors charge former SPD judge over
1.8 million abuse files
The haul is described as one of the largest involving a single individual in Lower Saxony, northern Germany.
The public prosecutor’s office in Hanover has charged a former official of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and serving judge with large-scale possession of child-pornographic material.
Investigators found approximately 1.7 million files on nearly 40 hard drives, USB sticks and laptops belonging to the man, German outlet Bild reported.
A further 150,000 files were classified as youth-pornographic, taking the total beyond 1.8 million, a spokeswoman for Hanover Regional Court told German press agency dpa. The material is said to include depictions of severe sexual abuse of infants and young children.
The haul is described as one of the largest involving a single individual in Lower Saxony, northern Germany.
Hanover Regional Court has received the indictment and is examining whether to open main proceedings. The charge sheet was filed at the end of May 2026.
The presumption of innocence applies until a final conviction.
Investigators opened the case after a referral from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the United States, a spokesman for the Hanover prosecutor’s office said.
Bild reported that the trail led to the man after an international paedophile network was dismantled.
In August 2024, police searched several premises he used, including locations in Hanover.
The accused, identified by German media as Thomas N., is 62, according to Hanover Regional Court. He had long been active in SPD bodies.
He stood as a candidate for the Thuringian state parliament and most recently sat on the party’s federal arbitration commission, its highest internal disciplinary body.
He served at the administrative court in Weimar and as a deputy member of the Thuringian Constitutional Court, and latterly at the social court in Nordhausen, Thuringia, central Germany, public broadcaster MDR reported.
The man remains at liberty. Authorities stated that no grounds for pre-trial detention exist.
His lawyer said he would not comment on the allegations.
Thuringian justice minister Beate Meißner has said she suspended the judge from duty as soon as the allegations became known, “to avert damage to the Thuringian judiciary”, the Thüringer Allgemeine reported on July 31, 2026.
She said the step was covered by civil service law and that the presumption of innocence applied to the official until a final conviction.
After the allegations became known, an SPD spokeswoman said, according to Bild, that the man had not been a party member since September 2024. He had declared the resignation himself.
A month earlier, the police had searched his apartment.
Possession of child-pornographic material carries a term of three months to five years under section 184b of the German criminal code. The minimum was cut from one year in June 2024, when the Bundestag reversed a 2021 tightening that had made possession a Verbrechen, or felony, rather than a Vergehen, or misdemeanour.
NCMEC referrals of the kind that opened this case depend on technology companies scanning their own services, an activity permitted in the European Union under a temporary exemption from the ePrivacy Directive that lapsed on April 3, 2026.
The Council of the European Union adopted a position on July 2, 2026 seeking to reinstate it until 2028, after the Federal Criminal Police Office warned that the gap would sharply reduce tip-offs to law enforcement.
Burnham orders review of grooming gang early releases
13 hours ago
Joshua Nevett,Political reporter,Damian Grammaticas,Political correspondentandDominic Casciani,Home and legal correspondent
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has ordered an "urgent" review to identify any grooming gang members who may be eligible to be freed from jail under the government's early release scheme.
The announcement comes after Tory leader Kemi Badenoch raised concerns that child sex offenders could leave jail well before the end of their sentences.
She pointed out that indecent assault was not included in the list of offences that the government said would be excluded from the early release scheme.
Five men convicted of indecent assault as part of a historical grooming-gang case in Bradford are among the prisoners whose offences were not included in the list of exclusions.
The prime minister's spokesperson said Burnham had asked the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to "conduct an in-depth review of cases to ensure that grooming cases were identified".
"This work is happening urgently," Burnham's spokesperson said.
"This is extremely important to the PM and he has personally intervened to ensure everything possible is being done so that vile groomers are dealt with in the way their victims deserve."
It is understood that at this stage the review will only seek to identify offenders who might be released early.
The government has not confirmed whether the review will lead to the prevention of any early releases of offenders convicted of grooming-related crimes.
Badenoch described the intervention as "another U-turn secured" and "another review from Burnham following my letter".
The government is planning to release about 5,000 offenders in England and Wales early in an effort to make space in overcrowded jails.
Burnham launched a review of the scheme after he became prime minister and this week he announced that some prisoners convicted of rape, serious child sex and other grooming offences would barred from early release.
But in a letter, Badenoch said many more types of offenders - including those convicted of sexually assaulting children - could be freed early.
"On Tuesday, you told the country that those convicted of grooming offences would be excluded," she wrote. "Your own government has now put in writing that some of these men will be released early anyway."
Highlighting that indecent assault was not excluded from the early release scheme, Badenoch said "many cases of child sex abuse committed before 2004 were charged this way, including Rotherham and Rochdale".
Badenoch branded this a "betrayal of victims", and urged Burnham to publish the full list of offences that remain eligible for early release.
Under changes made by Burnham, people sentenced for rape, serious child sex and grooming offences will now not be eligible for early release from October.
But some prisoners who are not excluded could be freed after serving a third of their total custodial sentence rather than after 40% or 50% of their term.
Burnham said he had wanted to exclude more offenders, but prison overcrowding prevented this.
The prime minister said making more prisoners exempt was not possible without the prison system collapsing and putting the public "at much greater risk".
The prison population in England and Wales on 3 August was 86,495, which was 97% of useable capacity.
The number of places in jails in England and Wales has not kept pace with the significant rise in the prison population in recent decades under successive governments.
There are cases of offenders who were convicted of indecent assault under section 14 and 15 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956.
These sections of the 1956 Act were not included in the government's list of exclusions, suggesting prisoners convicted of these crimes could qualify for the early release scheme.
Five men who were jailed in October 2005, after being convicted of indecent assault for abusing a teenage girl in Bradford in the early 2000s, could be eligible for early release under the scheme.
In December 2024, Ajaz Karim was jailed for 21 months after he was convicted of indecent assault for sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl at the school where he was a sports coach.
In another case, Shahid Hussain was jailed for eight years in September 2024, after he was convicted of indecently assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Rotherham in 2003.
The government has not yet confirmed exactly which offenders will be released.
The mother of PC Andrew Harper also said she was "devastated" to learn two men jailed after her son was killed will still be eligible for early release.
PC Harper, 28, was killed in 2019 when he was dragged by a car down a country road as three teenagers fled the scene of a quad bike theft in Berkshire.
His family previously said they had received a letter from the Ministry of Justice confirming that two of the offenders could be included in the early release scheme.
Earlier this week, Justice Secretary Alex Norris apologised to families affected by the early release scheme, saying they were "carrying the can from previous failures".
The justice secretary said about 5,000 extra releases will take place in 10 batches from October - down from about 6,000 before the revision.
The changes are due to be phased in, beginning with prisoners serving sentences of fewer than 575 days, going up to inmates jailed for 12 years or more being eligible for early release in June 2027.
The number of individuals released each time will depend on the prison population, which the government says will evolve between now and implementation.
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In Small Towns Across France, Victims Face an Uphill Battle for Justice Over AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Material
by Cécile Debarge
Hundreds of parents across Europe are learning that photographs of their children could have been used to generate artificial child sexual abuse material (CSAM). As AI-generated abuse images proliferate, victims and their families are discovering just how difficult it can be to obtain answers, recognition and justice.
"After the anger comes guilt, the guilt of having exposed your child to a child sex offender." For nearly six months, Pauline, a young mother living near Bordeaux, France, has been asking herself the same question over and over: could her son A., now seven months old, be among the children whose photographs have been used to create AI-generated child sexual abuse material? Like her, several hundred parents in Pauillac, a small town in the Gironde department of around 5,000 inhabitants, and across neighbouring communities, share the same fears.
Pauline is one of the parents whose children were photographed by a professional photographer whom they all knew well from the neighbourhood. Michel A. has been under formal investigation since 26 November 2025 for the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material, including content generated using artificial intelligence.
Pauline, still deeply shocked, recalls the day she learned about Michel A.’s investigation: "My heart stopped when I read the news on social media.” Shortly after her son's birth, she and her partner had arranged a photo shoot to capture their family’s first moments together. "He gave nothing away”, says the young woman, who never suspected anything at the time. "I could never have imagined that this kind of content could be created using artificial intelligence", she says, still struggling to process what happened as she speaks over the phone.
The photographer was a familiar figure to the community. He worked at local weddings, but also other public events throughout the region, including galas and childrens’ end-of-year performances. "I don't know if you can imagine how many children that represents," Karine, a mother of two daughters who are now 20 and 23 years old, recalls. "He mainly photographed my younger daughter at performances, from the age of seven or eight onwards and for many years afterwards”.
Neither Pauline nor Karine know whether their children's photographs have been used by the photographer to create AI-generated CSAM. The investigation could take months at best, or years at worst. In an effort to find answers, a group of parents, including Karine, set up a Facebook group to pool information and share the limited details they had managed to obtain. Today, the group has over 320 members. "Some people lost sleep over it. Others were deeply worried or furious, and probably still are," Karine recalls.
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