Four years of firm imprisonment, such was the verdict rendered, recently, by the criminal chamber of the Khouribga Court of Appeal against an employee, aged forty-nine, married and father of four children, for having sexually abused a thirteen-year-old minor.

The accused, who was a friend of the child's family, took him in his car a little further from the city to abuse him twice. It was by pure chance that the police officers who were carrying out a routine patrol surprised the paedophile in his car in the company of the child.

The latter did not hesitate to confide to them that the motorist was abusing him while giving him a ten-dirham coin. The child specified that the paedophile explained to him that it was a "normal" act that everyone does in secret.

The convicted man confessed to his crime while specifying that he was in the habit of accompanying children from time to time to abuse them for a few dirhams. This father of four children, whose eldest is a university student, denied before the Court being a paedophile and claimed that he had just taken the child with him for a ride, especially since he is the son of his friend.