Α shocking case, reminiscent of a Hollywood thriller showing online torture of vulnerable people for paying users, emerged over the weekend in a working-class Athens district with the arrest of a 42-year-old local man.
Greek authorities arrested the man in the early morning hours of Saturday in the near-Piraeus district of Keratsini as he was livestreaming a “torture session”. He is charged with subjecting three young adults, all suffering from learning disabilities, to two to three hours of torture on a daily basis while livestreaming the abuse.
Police said videos of previously livestreamed session show beatings, taser jolts, threats and humiliation of the victims, described as two men and a woman, the latter two in their 20s.
The suspect, identified only as “Lefteris” in the days before the unprecedented case was discovered, was first arrested last week on charges of distributing cannabis. He was released and reportedly continued to broadcast the abuse, which included sexual assault.
Police said the suspect would request money from viewers in order to fulfil specific “requests” of abuse, such as punching the victims while wearing boxing gloves, tasing, cutting their hair and eyebrows and even ordering them to engage in sexual acts.
The livestreamed abuse began in September 2020, police said.
Greek authorities have so far counted roughly 21,500 registered users on the platform used by the suspect, while recovering 554 videos showing the horrendous abuse.
In one appalling video, as reported by the Athens-based Mega Channel on Sunday, one of the victims is viciously beaten after saying he wanted to leave, and while thousands of Internet users looked on.
One former subscriber, by his own admission, told Mega that he saw multiple beatings of the victims.
The “torture chamber” was described as a dilapidated house, where the alleged perpetrator provided vulnerable individuals with a daily meal and a small allowance in order to “hit them, to humiliate them; he did this for profit.”
The suspect has been charged with a variety of felonies.
