A German woman has been sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison for selling her young son on the darknet to abusers, in a case that has horrified the country and raised questions about its child protection services.
The 48-year-old woman and her partner, 39, a convicted paedophile, were convicted of
forced prostitution, rape, sexual and physical abuse, humiliation, and bondage in almost 60 separate identified acts.
The partner was given a 12-year prison sentence plus a preventative detention order, which will effectively keep him in prison for life. Six other men, including a Spanish man, a Swiss citizen and three German men who had paid the couple to abuse the boy, now 10, were given sentences of between eight and 10 years.
The court in the south-western city of Freiburg heard that the abuse had been going on for two years. The mother had threatened her son with foster care if he reported it.
The paedophile ring was operated like a business from the town of Staufen, near Freiburg, where the couple lived. Abusers were believed to have paid up to €10,000 (£8,950) a time to abuse the boy.
The couple, identified only as Berrin T and Christian L, admitted to the court that
they had sold the boy to numerous men and that they had abused him themselveshttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/german-couple-who-sold-son-to-paed...