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.
These included performing sexual acts against their will, including with knives, or carving the names of their tormentors or Nazi symbols into their skin. READ | Texas Daycare Ran ‘Child Fight Club’, Lawsuit Filed By Parents Alleges 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. 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.
Rane, who came to France to study before becoming a fitness coach, was the group’s leader, according to an AFP report quoting investigators. “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. CLVT 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. The French court said the group, which was active in the US, had already sought to intimidate victims and witnesses and had threatened prosecutors.
