When the school turns into a crime scene: There were shocking allegations at the Traunstein regional court that a student allegedly raped a ten-year-old several times. The trial has been suspended for the time being.
Traunstein – The accusation causes astonishment: A then 14-year-old is said to have raped a ten-year-old classmate several times in the school toilet of an Upper Bavarian high school.
The public prosecutor charged the alleged perpetrator on Tuesday in the Traunstein district court with child sexual abuse, rape and bodily harm. After only two days of negotiations, justice should be pronounced this Wednesday, everything seemed to amount to a quick verdict. But now it turns out differently.
“Extensive follow-up investigations are still required, which will probably take some time,” said a spokeswoman for the court a few hours after the start of the trial. Therefore, it should not continue until November. “The process must then be started again.”
The court spokeswoman could not initially say in which direction the investigations should go. According to the indictment, the older one is said to have abused the younger one again and again in autumn 2017, raping him three to four times during the afternoon care at the Raubling high school near Rosenheim. The child is said to have participated because it was afraid of being hit. According to the court, the accused youth has denied the crime to the police.
“It is extremely rare that something like this is reported,” says criminologist Christian Pfeiffer. “The courage is considerable, but that is a rarity. Many shy away from it because the victim status no longer leaves them. “
How frequent such cases are nationwide is not recorded according to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). And Pfeiffer also says: “I don’t dare to predict the frequency.” He assumes a very large number of unreported cases.
For Bavaria, however, there are figures that are remarkable: Although the number of serious sexual offenses according to the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) has remained about the same, something has changed in the schoolyard: the total number of crimes against sexual self-determination in schools has almost tripled – from 102 in 2016 to 295 in 2020. The number of suspects rose in the same period from 97 to 273 – although it should be noted that since an amendment to sexual criminal law, the criminal offenses of sexual harassment and sexual assault have also been recorded.
In addition, the majority of this constitutes the criminal offense of disseminating pornographic literature. While there were 38 cases in this context at Bavarian schools in 2016, there were 168 in 2020.
A look at the UK reveals a worrying trend: the UK regulator Ofsted recently published a report on sexual harassment in schools. The frightening result: What Pokémon cards used to be, are now naked pictures of classmates. They are systematically collected in boy cliques and shared as trophies on WhatsApp or Snapchat. And this “game” is just one of many examples of the harrowing findings of the report, which concludes that sexism and sexual harassment are commonplace in British schools.
According to the report, nine out of ten girls said they had often or sometimes unintentionally sent explicit pictures or were addressed with sexist nicknames. Around three quarters reported sexual assault. Well over half said they had been touched unintentionally.
According to the Bavarian Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, the school has to “inform the law enforcement authorities immediately” as soon as they become aware of a sexual offense. “For this duty of disclosure, the permission to give evidence is hereby granted for the headmistress,” said a corresponding announcement by the Ministry of Education in 2014.
“In view of the increasingly sexualized world in which students live, the development of skills is particularly necessary for successful prevention, for example in order to critically question media messages and be able to deal with the media in a more self-determined manner,” says a ministry spokesman.
“Young people are particularly receptive to trends and values that are disseminated in the media. Via television, the Internet, music or computer games, they are confronted with problematic and disturbing content on the subject of sexuality, often removing the connection between respect, tenderness, love and sexuality and conveying a dubious image of men and women. ”Dpa
