A German mother and her partner who sold the woman’s nine-year-old son for sex on the internet and filmed themselves as they raped him have been sentenced to 12 years in prison.

The 48-year-old woman and 39-year-old man offered the young boy to paedophiles using the dark net – the part of the internet which is not searchable by search engines such as Google.

The two also repeatedly raped the boy, who is now 10, and filming it, a Freiburg court found. The abuse went on for two years.

Freiburg state court sentenced the woman to 12 years and six months in prison, while the man was given a 12-year sentence. The man must remain in preventive custody after serving his sentence.

Both convicts were among a group of suspected paedophiles arrested last year.