Walter Finch
A youth football scout who posted clips of himself abusing young children has been arrested in a town near Sitges.
He gave himself away
The man worked for various football clubs travelling around the region of Vilanova i la Geltrú in Barcelona province watching youth matches and scouting young players.
He allegedly recorded the assaults using a mobile phone – while always taking care to hide his face – and then uploaded the footage to various channels on the Dark Web used by paedophiles around the world.
The investigation began when special agents of the Policia Nacional detected child abuse images in which the culprit was speaking Spanish. With further analysis they figured out that the videos appeared to have been filmed in Spain.
Due to the low quality and the close-up nature of the images, investigators could not tell how many children were involved in each clip.
An international task force which involved cooperation with Queensland police in Australia and the technical capabilities of Interpol was assembled, along with the local police of Sant Pere de Ribes, where the crimes took place.
As of now, six victims have been identified between the ages of 3 and 10, all of them known to the football scout either through friendship with their parents or by living in the same flat.
Investigators had to resort to open-source tracking tools and image recognition and old-fashioned police intelligence techniques to identify the suspected perpetrator.
This was due to the stringent security measures he took, which involved hiding his face, disguising himself in the Dark Web and changing up the mobile phones used to film the abuse.
However, after analysing the various clips carefully, examining the movements and body language of the culprit, as well as the language and idioms used and other clues available, police were able to determine that they were all filmed by the same person.
One photograph included in the cache of sickening images showed the outside of the building partially visible through a window, allowing police to determine the exact location and apartment where it had been taken.
Police swooped to search the location and arrest their prime suspect, where new evidence of grotesque abuse was uncovered, indicating that it had been ongoing since 2016.
As a result of the search, four hard drives, three memory cards, a mobile phone and an action camera were found.
The case remains open as through his profession he would have had greater opportunity to pursue further child abuse.
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