Police failed to investigate child porn discovery before suspect killed 9-year-old boy

The Limburg police found child pornography on Donny M.’s phone about 18 months before he abducted, sexually abused, and killed 9-year-old Gino van der Straeten. “Human error” resulted in the police not investigating the child porn further, the Justice and Security Inspectorate said on Monday after investigating the incident.

Gino disappeared from Kerkrade on 1 June 2022 while playing outside his sister’s home. On 4 June, M. was arrested at his home in Geleen and not much later led the police to the boy’s body. M. has confessed that he abducted Gino, took him to his home in Geleen, drugged the boy, and then sexually abused him. M. then strangled and smothered Gino. The investigation against M. for Gino’s death is still ongoing.

“About a year and a half earlier, in January 2021, the police confiscated his mobile phone because he was a suspect in a fireworks incident,” the Justice and Security Inspectorate said.

At that time, police officers found child pornography on his phone. However, the discovery was not recorded in a computer log as a separate case for the specialized police team handling child pornography and child sex tourism cases, or TBKK. The police involved in the fireworks investigation did physically deliver the phone to TBKK, but the child pornography investigation still was not recorded properly.

“The telephone itself was still at TBKK. However, it escaped their attention,” the inspectorate said. “In any case, the initial team must register the case separately in the computer system to ensure that the TBKK sees the case in its tasks list, then picks it up and keeps track of developments,” the inspectorate wrote.

“The child pornography was mentioned in digital documents about the fireworks incident. However, it was not visible as an ‘independent case’ in the computer system. TBKK, therefore, did not see anything in its digital work inventory and did not study the telephone.”

Limburg police said the TBKK unit was very busy when they received the phone, in part because their experts had to return to normal street work to help enforce the coronavirus curfew.

According to the Inspectorate, the Limburg police has now adjusted its procedures to prevent such a mistake from being made again. Data carriers like phones and laptops can no longer be transferred to a specialist team like the TBKK without a separate registration in the computer system. The police believe this will ensure that the specialist team notices the transfer because it will see it as a separate case on its digital inventory.

“The Inspectorate sees no reason to conduct further investigation, especially since the Limburg unit has addressed the gap in its process,” the Inspectorate said. It did, however, stress that the police nationwide must ensure that “this process surrounding the transfer of data carriers is watertight.”