Transgender blogger jailed over pornography
Russian transgender blogger Hilmi Forks has been sentenced to three years in prison for illegally producing and distributing pornography on the internet, according to the press service of Moscow’s prosecutor’s office.
29-year-old Forks, who currently has over 400,000 subscribers on Instagram, was arrested in July after a criminal case was opened against him over a post on a Telegram channel in 2022 in which he’d supposedly shared videos of a sexual nature.
The investigation into the alleged offense was first announced by the head of Russia’s Safe Internet League Ekaterina Mizulina, who said that Forks had been placed under house arrest while the investigation was ongoing. If convicted, Forks faced a maximum sentence of six years behind bars.
On Wednesday, the Simonovsky District Court of Moscow ruled that the blogger would be sentenced to three years in prison, the time to be served in a general regime correctional colony. Forks was taken into custody in the courtroom after the ruling was announced.
In late November, the blogger’s lawyer Konstantin Erokhin stated that his client had admitted he was guilty of spreading pornographic material via the internet and had cooperated with the investigation hoping for the “most lenient punishment,” given the circumstances.
Erokhin pointed out that Forks had participated in the transfer of funds to charitable organizations that deal with issues of morality and stressed that by the time the investigation was launched, the Telegram channel on which he’d allegedly spread the pornographic material, had already been deleted.
Earlier this year, the transgender blogger also drew the attention of police by allegedly spreading “LGBT propaganda,” an act outlawed in Russia since 2022. Before criminal proceedings could be launched, Forks fled the country, residing in Armenia for several months. In July, however, he decided to return to Russia but managed almost immediately to become embroiled in another scandal, getting filmed fighting with a man at a fast-food restaurant in Moscow.
