LOD, Israel (AP) — A district court in central Israel on Wednesday convicted a 22-year-old IDF reservist of dozens of sexual offenses in what prosecutors described as an unprecedented, large-scale online child sexual abuse case.
Uri Alfi, from the central Israeli town of Mazkeret Batya, was convicted as part of a plea deal after admitting that he posed as a woman on social media and used technological tools to manipulate fathers into sexually abusing their own children and sending him recordings of the acts.
According to an amended indictment filed by prosecutors from the State Attorney’s cyber unit, Alfi operated for about a year using multiple platforms, including Telegram, Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram. He used fictitious accounts and false identities to contact about 25 men, most of them fathers, and engaged them in sexual conversations while impersonating a woman.
Prosecutors said Alfi used technology he found online that allowed him to appear and sound like a woman during video calls. During those conversations, he instructed the men to carry out sexual acts against their minor children, including infants and very young children, and to document the abuse and send him the footage.
The indictment detailed a series of impersonations that led to sexual abuse within families. In one case, Alfi posed as a woman while speaking with the father of a 1½-year-old girl and directed him to carry out sexual acts in the child’s room during a video call. In another case, using the alias “Maria,” he persuaded a father to sexually abuse his young son, telling him the child “would not remember” because of his age.
Prosecutors said Alfi also communicated under female identities with dozens of other social media users, including minors, convincing them to perform sexual acts on themselves, record the acts and send the material to him. Investigators found more than 150 files containing child sexual abuse material in his possession.
Alfi was convicted of multiple offenses, including causing rape and indecent acts against minors by family members, attempted rape of a minor family member, using a minor’s body for the production of obscene material, blackmail and other related crimes.
The original indictment was filed in March last year. In a request to keep Alfi in custody, prosecutors said he had acted obsessively online and had “turned his sexual deviation into a mission,” seeking to cause as many sexual assaults as possible to satisfy his urges.
Sentencing has not yet been announced.