Darmstadt (dpa/lhe) – In the fight against sexual crimes against wards, police forces carried out 18 searches in southern Hesse. The public prosecutor’s office in Darmstadt, the Hessian State Criminal Police Office and the police reported together on Monday about the operations of around 70 police officers at the end of June. The forces were therefore able to secure numerous pieces of evidence with relevant photos and videos.

Among them were six PCs, 15 laptops, 28 mobile phones, four tablets, 94 hard drives, four memory cards, 129 USB sticks and five game consoles, it said. According to the information, the searches were carried out on suspects between the ages of 16 and 78 in the districts of Bergstrasse, Groß-Gerau, Darmstadt-Dieburg and in the Odenwald district. The officials discovered a server cabinet with a total of 288 terabytes of data on 72 hard drives in a 43-year-old from the Darmstadt-Dieburg district.

According to the information, the priority action was part of the investigations of the special organizational structure for cross-case organizational structure against child pornography and sexual abuse of children (BAO FOKUS). Across Hesse, more than 195 investigators are specifically pursuing sexual crimes against those under protection.