When school becomes a crime scene: A trial of shocking allegations will begin on Tuesday at the Traunstein Regional Court.
Traunstein – There are shocking allegations that the Traunstein Regional Court has to deal with this Tuesday: A then 14-year-old is said to have raped a ten-year-old classmate several times. The scene of the crime: the school toilet of an Upper Bavarian high school.
Again and again he is said to have abused the younger one, raping him three to four times. According to the public prosecutor’s office, all of this happened in autumn 2017 during afternoon care at a high school near Rosenheim.
The accused boy is said to have lured the then ten-year-old to the toilet under a pretext. 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.
He is charged with child sexual abuse, rape and assault. The court has set two trial days. The verdict could therefore fall on Wednesday (23.6.).
“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 Office of Criminal Investigation (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 the sexual criminal law, the criminal offenses of sexual harassment and sexual assault have also been recorded.
In addition, the majority of this is 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 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
