Balázs Sz., Győr Fidesz’s former member and former secretary of a Fidesz MP, was sentenced to 2 years, 6 months in prison, and banned for life from any activities involving children after he had been caught secretly filming children on one of the local beaches last summer.
Balázs Sz., aged 38, graduated as a religious teacher, and had been working as local Fidesz MP Róbert Balázs Simon’s parliamentary secretary and also participated in several local campaigns of the ruling party. Just months before his arrest, he was appointed to the Győr Assembly’s committee in charge of educational, cultural, touristic, and sport matters.
His arrest last August came after a local climber spotted a man (Balázs Sz.), with a recording device in his baseball cap on Győr’s Aranypart (Golden Shore) public beach.
Investigators then found a total of 63 recordings secretly made in the dressing rooms and 91 other child pornography recordings on him. According to the findings, he was filming children with this aforementioned method since the summer of 2019.
Reportedly his lawyer, in hopes for a suspended prison term, argued that he was only taking pictures, and never touched anybody and while many more pictures were found on Gábor Kaleta, the former ambassador was still given a milder punishment. Even though the court assessed his clean record, cooperation, remorse, and personality disorder as extenuating circumstances, the regular, recurring nature of the act, which he was doing for one year, and the public outrage it caused, were all considered as aggravating factors. Therefore, he was sentenced to jail, and won’t be released until he serves at least two-thirds of the sentence.
Feature photo illustration by Csaba Krizsán/MTI