Jean Luc Aschbacher, born in Selestat, France in 1955, was a quiet, outwardly friendly resident who lived on Calle Tapioles in Barcelona’s Poble-sec district. By 2001 he rebranded his company, Productos Aschom SL. At that time his home workshop had shifted from producing erotic films for gay audiences to becoming a hub for child sexual abuse material as the internet disrupted traditional adult entertainment business models. In that same year, Aschbacher and a business partner, Christian Arson, redirected their operations to producing child pornography on a larger, more systematized scale.
The production outfit then cultivated closer ties with other Spanish individuals involved in such crimes, including José Cardona Serrat, Fernando Aguilera Garrido, Miguel Avilés Fernández, and Martín Rafael Chanza Almudéver. They expanded their reach by traveling to several developing countries, exploiting the poverty of minors who, for money, were induced to participate. Recordings were made across numerous locations in Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Tunisia, Singapore, Bali, Java, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Kenya, and France. Nevertheless, the bulk of the material involved minors from diverse backgrounds, with many depicted in vulnerable circumstances. Among those connected to the operation was Youness en Naciry, who worked for Aschbacher and Arson and moved from victim to facilitator as he himself was drawn into abusing others.
2008, big missed opportunity
A former resident of the Tapioles building recounts, very young men appearing to come and go from that flat was common. The neighbor recalls, with certainty, that something illicit was happening in Aschbacher’s apartment, and he witnessed the reactions of long-time residents upstairs who occasionally saw sexual activity through interior windows. The discovery shocked the building, as several elderly couples on the stairs were scandalized by what they observed downstairs.
In 2006 a neighbor reported concerns to the National Police, recounting a strange episode in which Aschbacher gave him a box of pornographic films in 2005 and asked him to guard it while family matters were attended to. The neighbor later claimed to have found material in the box that appeared to be child pornography, though he could not verify its origin. He provided this account to the National Police along with the films themselves.
The National Police opened an inquiry in 2006 and discovered a mailbox registered to the suspect. The authorities initially faced delays, and Aschbacher was not arrested until July 2008 for reasons not disclosed here. Officers were surprised by a delivery linked to the mailbox, and there was tension over whether the content the police presented truly belonged to Aschbacher. His lawyer explained that the material shown at the station appeared to be adult gay pornography, and Aschbacher denied that the footage handed over by the neighbor matched any material in his possession.
On the following day, police executed a court-ordered search of the headquarters of Productos Aschom SL, located on Tapioles Street and functioning as the company’s workspace as well as Aschbacher’s home. The lawyer noted that investigators initially found only adult pornography there. The lead investigator then sought permission to inspect Aschbacher’s personal computer. He could have refused, but Aschbacher cooperated, believing nothing would be found after he had deleted everything.
The police recovered the deleted files from the personal computer. They contained encrypted terminology tied to pedophilia that pointed to data once accessed via peer-to-peer networks such as Emule.
apocalypse and escape
Despite the allegations and the neighbors’ accounts of constant comings and goings of youths, information compiled by El Periódico years later, along with material seized by the police, did not immediately lead authorities to charge him. In 2010 Aschbacher faced a sentence from the 11th Criminal Court of Barcelona for distributing child pornography, albeit a relatively light sanction at the time. Some residents recalled a violent incident in which Aschbacher was restrained and subjected to a frightening confrontation that left him physically vulnerable, an event that was not fully documented by local authorities at the time.
By 2011 Aschbacher relocated from Poble-sec to Tortosa with his partner Christian Arson, continuing the same pattern of capturing vulnerable minors and exploiting their displacement to record abuse on video. He was finally apprehended by the Catalonian Mossos d’Esquadra in 2015 after a notification from the current director general of DGAIA. In the Tarragona courtroom, a lengthy sentence followed, and the case exposed a network that persisted for years before authorities intervened. The trial included testimonies from several abused youths who described manipulation, coercion, and repeated exploitation after 2008.
In the Tarragona Audiencia judgment against Aschbacher and Arson, the testimonies depicted ongoing manipulation, humiliation, and rape of minors who were involved for years under their control. The verdict underscored the severity of the exploitation and the scale of the crimes committed, revealing a network that had operated across multiple jurisdictions for a prolonged period.