BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Sixteen people, including a former UNICEF official, were convicted Monday of participating in a child sex ring that used a lab in the cellar of a UNICEF office to develop pictures of children in obscene acts.

Jozef Verbeeck, 63, former director of the Brussels office of the U.N. Children's Fund, was sentenced by a Belgian district court to two years in prison for his part in the scandal.


The ring used an organization called CRIES, a French acronym for 'Study and Research Center on Children and Sexuality,' as a cover for its operations.

Verbeeck was charged with knowledge of the group's activities, coordinated by Michel Felu, a UNICEF employee who installed a photo lab in the cellar of the UNICEF office to develop pictures of children engaged in obscene acts.

Felu was sentenced to eight years in prison. Other ring members, ranging in age between 30 and 64, received prison sentences of four to 10 years.

Mothers who sent their sons to the group received suspended sentences of one or three years.

One mother was acquitted and charges against another were dropped after the second woman was shown to suffer from mental problems.