Five American women aged between 18 and 21 are expected to give evidence by video link this week in a Paris courtroom closed to the public, against the man investigators describe as the leader of an online group that coerced girls, most of them minors at the time, into sexual acts and self-harm.
The Rohan Rane trial opened on Monday 5 October before the Paris assize court and is due to run until Friday 9 October. Rane, a 29-year-old Indian national, came to France to study at a business school in the south-eastern city of Antibes and later worked as a fitness coach. He was arrested in 2021 and is charged with torture or acts of barbarity against minors, organised extortion and distributing child sexual abuse material. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison.
On the opening day, the court ordered that the hearing be held behind closed doors, following a request from United States authorities. Hippolyte Marquetty, the lawyer for the five American women, who have joined the case as civil parties, opposed the move with the backing of child protection groups. He has said his clients wanted to tell their alleged abuser what they had been through, and to warn others about the risks teenage girls face on social media.
Rane’s lawyer, Irina Kratz, declined to comment ahead of the hearing. He is presumed innocent until the court reaches its verdict.
Who is Rohan Rane?
Rohan Sandeep Rane is an Indian citizen who moved to France as a student. US court filings from January 2025 gave his age as 28 and his home as Antibes, on the French Riviera. Investigators describe him as the leader of an online group called CVLT, pronounced “cult”, and US prosecutors say he founded it.
Little else about his life before France is on the public record. His home town in India has not been reported, and no public statement on the case from Indian authorities could be found when the trial opened.
What was the CVLT network?
US prosecutors describe CVLT as an international child exploitation enterprise that espoused neo-Nazism, nihilism and paedophilia, and say it was active from 2019 to 2022. It operated through servers on the messaging platform Discord, where members shared extremist material alongside abuse content.
According to the US Justice Department, the group victimised at least 16 minors around the world, including two in Southern California. Prosecutors say members targeted children who were already vulnerable, including those with mental health difficulties or histories of abuse, and groomed them by exposing them to degrading and extremist content.
Members then pressed the children to produce sexual abuse material and content showing self-harm, escalating their demands over time. Victims who resisted were threatened with having compromising images sent to their families. The girls targeted were mostly under age and lived in countries including the United States, the Netherlands, Britain and Estonia.
US Homeland Security Investigations, which led the American inquiry, identifies Rane as a leader and administrator of the enterprise who controlled who could join the group. It names two of his American co-defendants, from New Jersey and Texas, as fellow leaders and administrators who hosted and ran its servers, and the third, from Hawaii, as a member.
“The defendants here are alleged to have committed horrific acts against children,” Joseph T. McNally, then the acting US Attorney for the Central District of California, said when the American charges were announced. “There is nothing more important than protecting our youth,” he added.
How is CVLT linked to the 764 network?
Researchers at the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, in an August 2025 report on youth-targeting abuse networks, describe CVLT as an early practitioner of the types of abuse that would later become associated with 764, a larger online network. The report says CVLT formed between 2017 and 2019 and first organised itself on the private messaging app Kik. The same report says Bradley Cadenhead, who went on to found 764, had been a member of CVLT as a child. Cadenhead is serving an 80-year prison sentence in the United States, which, according to the report, he began before his 18th birthday.
The FBI has since warned that 764 and similar groups are active worldwide. In a public service announcement issued on 6 March 2025, the bureau said such networks methodically target and exploit minors, mainly children aged between nine and 17 and particularly girls, using threats, blackmail and manipulation. It said they operate on social media sites, gaming platforms and mobile apps commonly used by young people. The bureau said the networks also prey on people with mental health vulnerabilities, and use threats to dox victims, by publishing their personal details, or to swat them, by making false emergency calls designed to send police to their homes.
The tactics in the FBI warning, grooming followed by coercion into producing sexual images or self-harm content, are the same ones US prosecutors allege CVLT members used.
How did the case reach a Paris court?
The case first surfaced in November 2020, after a report from the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children set investigators on the group’s trail. Rane was arrested in France the following year, while American prosecutors pursued members based in the United States.
In 2025, French judges sent the case for trial before the assize court, the court that hears the most serious crimes in France, on charges that expose Rane to a possible life sentence. It is that court which is now sitting in Paris this week.
Why is the Paris trial being held behind closed doors?
French criminal trials are public by default, but Article 306 of the Code of Criminal Procedure allows an assize court to sit in private when open hearings would endanger public order or morals. In cases involving rape, or torture and acts of barbarity accompanied by sexual assault, a victim can also require a closed hearing. In this case, the court granted a request from US authorities on the opening day, even though the lawyer for the five American civil parties argued for an open hearing so the risks could be discussed publicly.
What charges does Rane face in the United States?
Rane also faces charges in the United States. On 30 January 2025, the Justice Department announced that he and three American co-defendants, from New Jersey, Hawaii and Texas, had each been charged with one count of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise. That offence carries a mandatory minimum of 20 years in federal prison and a maximum of life.
The case is being prosecuted by the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, with Homeland Security Investigations among the agencies leading the inquiry. Assistant US Attorney Catharine A. Richmond and Justice Department trial attorneys Justin Sher and James Donnelly are handling the prosecution. The New Jersey and Hawaii defendants were arrested on 30 January 2025, the day the charges were made public, by Homeland Security Investigations agents working from offices in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and Honolulu. The investigation also drew on the French national police, Britain’s National Crime Agency, New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs and Europol.
All three American co-defendants have since pleaded guilty. The New Jersey defendant entered his plea in October 2025 and the Hawaii defendant in December 2025; both remain in federal custody awaiting sentencing. Kaleb Merritt, 26, of Spring, Texas, known online as eTerror, pleaded guilty in March 2026 and is due to be sentenced on 7 January 2027. He is already serving a long state prison sentence in Virginia for child sex abuse crimes committed in 2020 and 2021. A senior Justice Department official described Merritt as one of the online administrators who kept CVLT running.
“Sextortion and other forms of online child sexual abuse have tragically altered the trajectory of too many young lives,” Eddy Wang, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles, said when the charges were announced.
The Justice Department says Rane remains in custody in France and that his extradition to the United States is pending.
How are authorities responding to networks like CVLT?
Britain’s National Crime Agency reports the same kind of harm growing quickly. On 25 March 2025, the National Crime Agency warned that reports of what it calls Com networks, online communities where offenders work together to cause harm ranging from fraud and extremism to child sexual abuse, had risen six-fold between 2022 and 2024. The agency said girls as young as 11 had been coerced into hurting themselves or into abuse, and that thousands of users in Britain and other Western countries had exchanged millions of messages about sexual and physical abuse.
“Young people are being drawn into these sadistic and violent online gangs where they are collaborating at scale to inflict, or incite others to commit, serious harm,” Graeme Biggar, the agency’s director general, said at the time.
UK minister Jess Phillips said in the same statement: “The scale of child sexual abuse in this report is absolutely horrific and drives home the need for a co-ordinated response.”
The CVLT investigation itself shows how far such cases now travel. The American inquiry drew on police and agencies in France, Britain and New Zealand, as well as Europol. Rane now faces proceedings in two countries at once: the trial in Paris, and federal charges in the United States, where his extradition remains pending.
What parents can watch for
Because the case turns on abuse that began on ordinary platforms used by teenagers, investigators have published guidance for families. The FBI’s March 2025 warning lists signs that a child may be targeted by a violent online network: sudden withdrawal, moodiness or irritability; dropping activities they used to enjoy; a new online “friend” who seems to cause fear or infatuation; unexplained gifts, money or gaming credits; and unexplained cuts, burns or other injuries, or long sleeves worn in warm weather to hide them.
The bureau advises parents to keep track of their children’s online activity, to talk to them about the risks of sharing images, and to seek help from a doctor or mental health professional if they see worrying behaviour. In an emergency, families should call the police.
The scale of the problem is not confined to the United States. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner reported that sexual extortion reports to its office rose from almost 600 in the first quarter of 2022 to more than 1,700 in the first quarter of 2023, and that reports of child sexual abuse material rose from just under 3,000 to almost 8,000 over the same period.
The National Crime Agency gives similar advice in Britain: talk to children regularly about what they do online, make sure they know they have your support, and seek help if you are worried.
Reporting routes differ by country. In the United States, concerns can be reported to the FBI through its Internet Crime Complaint Center or local field offices, or to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline, online or on 1-800-THE-LOST, and its Take It Down service helps remove explicit images of minors from the internet. In Britain, the CEOP Safety Centre run by the National Crime Agency takes reports of online sexual abuse. In Australia, the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation takes reports of online sexual behaviour towards children, and the eSafety Commissioner handles image-based abuse and sexual extortion.
What comes next in the Rohan Rane trial?
The five American civil parties are expected to testify by video link before the hearing closes on Friday 9 October. No date for the verdict had been publicly confirmed when the trial opened. Because the court is sitting in private, the testimony itself will not be heard by the press or the public.
Whatever the Paris court decides, the federal charges against Rane in the United States remain outstanding, and the Justice Department continues to list his extradition as pending. Merritt’s sentencing in January is the next scheduled step in the American case.
