Man charged with indecent assault, child porn

Haifa man allegedly chatted with minors on the Internet posing as a 17 year old, asked for sexually explicit photos.

By JOANNA PARASZCZUK
Man on computer 390 (photo credit: Thinkstock/Imagebank)
Man on computer 390
(photo credit: Thinkstock/Imagebank)
The Haifa district attorney filed an indictment in the district court on Thursday, charging a 66-year-old man with multiple counts of indecent assault, aggravated fraud and possession of obscene publications featuring a minor.
According to the indictment, the defendant Nissim Cohen used the ICQ chat program to contact girls as young as 12, telling them he was a 17-yearold high school student from Tel Aviv, and sending them pictures of a good-looking teenage boy to gain their confidence.
Allegedly, he then started to talk to the minors about sex and asked them to send him nude photographs of themselves.
Because the minors believed Cohen was 17, the indictment says, some of them agreed to his requests and sent him the images he asked for. According to the indictment, when police examined Cohen’s computer, they found a large number of obscene images of nude minors.
One charge listed on the indictment says Cohen used his computer’s video camera to send images of his genitals to one 12-year-old he was chatting to, and then asked the young girl to perform a sex act on him.
In a later chat last month, Cohen asked the child to send him explicit photographs of her body, which the 12-yearold girl did, believing Cohen to be a teenage boy.
Cohen saved the photos in a file on his computer, the indictment alleges.
When the girl’s parents discovered she had been chatting to a stranger on the Internet, and found the naked photos she had taken on her computer, they insisted that she stop the correspondence, the indictment says.
Another charge accuses Cohen of sending obscene and sexually explicit messages to a 17-year-old girl, again after presenting himself as a 17- year-old boy. Allegedly, Cohen told the girl he was in love with her, and asked her to send him explicit photographs of herself taken on her cellphone.
The district attorney also filed a request that Cohen be remanded in custody throughout the legal proceedings against him.