An Indian man accused of leading a neo-Nazi child exploitation ring went on trial behind closed doors in Paris on Monday, with accusations that he had coerced girls into performing online sexual acts and engaging in self-harm.
If convicted, Rohan Sandeep Rane, 29, could face life imprisonment.
Rane and his group, CVLT (pronounced: cult), are believed to have abused mostly underage girls in the United States, the Netherlands, Britain and Estonia among other countries.
The ring has been described as an “online group that espoused neo-Nazism, nihilism, and pedophilia as its core principles.”
The perpetrators, men from Germany, New Zealand and the US, used online platforms like Discord to groom and coerce the victims into performing sexual acts and self-harm.
Rane, who came to France to study before becoming a fitness coach, was the group’s leader, according to an AFP report quoting investigators. He was arrested in 2021, and is being tried on charges including torture or acts of barbarity against minors, organised extortion and dissemination of child sexual abuse material.
READ | “I Am Jane Doe”: Women Share Their Experiences After Cornell University Rape
Victims Were Forced To Eat Hair, Carve Names On Themselves
The case first came into light in 2020, as part of an initiative by the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children to combat child sexual abuse. The organisation discovered online images of a 12-year-old girl with her chest exposed. A user was found coercing her into writing the name “Rohan” on her body.
A court document released by the US Department of Justice details the extreme level of harassment and abuse the victims faced.
Rane and other CVLT members worked collectively to coerce children into self-producing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), including by exposing the victims to extremist and violent content.
The targets specifically included children with a sexual abuse history or mental health issues.
“Victims were encouraged to engage in increasingly dehumanising acts, including cutting and eating their own hair, drinking their urine, punching themselves, calling themselves racial slurs, and using razor blades to carve CVLT members’ names into their skin,” the Justice Department said in its document.
The coercion even escalated into pressuring the victims to “kill themselves on a video livestream,” it said.
The members targeted their victims on Instagram or other social media platforms.
READ | Texas Daycare Ran ‘Child Fight Club’, Lawsuit Filed By Parents Alleges
They would pursue the girls into sending them naked pictures and then threatened to publish these materials online and send them to their family or friends if they refused to comply with their demands.
According to the AFP report, the members would also threaten the girls by saying that they would make fake calls to security services so that they would turn up at their doors.
“For victims who stopped participating in the CSAM, CVLT would sometimes carry through on their threats,” the Justice Department document says.
CVLT members, who, according to AFP, called themselves “warlords”, would then force the victims, often Jewish or black girls they called “slaves”, to do as they would ask. These included performing sexual acts against their will, including with knives, or carving the names of their tormentors or Nazi symbols into their skin.
CVLT Threatened US Prosecutors
The reason why Rane’s trial is being held behind closed doors is because of a request from US authorities.
The French court said the group, which was active in the US, had already sought to intimidate victims and witnesses and had threatened prosecutors.
Further, the videos showing the torture of victims, mostly under the age of 15, were expected to be screened during proceedings.
One of the members, Kaleb Christopher Merritt, is already serving a 50-year sentence for child sex abuse crimes in the US, which he committed in 2020 and 2021.
Rohan Rane’s trial in Paris is expected to continue till Friday.
