An 81-year-old retired man was sentenced to four years in prison for downloading child sexual abuse material on his desktop computer. The sentence was handed down by the Criminal and Correctional Chamber 2nd Nomination of the city of Córdoba after confirming that he used a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing program known as eMule to obtain the videos. This method was also used by brothers Germán and Sebastián Kiczka, who have already been convicted in the province of Misiones.
During the trial, Sergio Abelardo Malagara was found guilty of aggravated child sexual abuse and exploitation due to the presence of representations of minors under thirteen years of age, as well as possession of child sexual abuse and exploitation material with a clear intention of distribution, aggravated by the age of the victim. The elderly man's lawyers argued that their client was unaware that downloading such content was contributing to its dissemination on the Internet.
However, Judge Inés Lucero rebutted this defense, stating that the accused was of sound mind to commit the crime, as he lived alone and had an engineering education. It was established that Malagara had more than fifty files stored on one of his devices. Despite the sentence, the convicted man will remain free until it becomes final, but he was prohibited from approaching minors and maintaining any form of telephone or virtual contact. Additionally, he must undergo psychological treatment specialized in the sexual area, and the seizure of his desktop computer was ordered.
