The district court in Traunstein has sentenced a former Catholic community leader to one year and ten months on probation for raping a young woman. The chamber was bound by a so-called deal in its verdict on Tuesday. Right at the beginning of the trial last week, after a legal talk behind closed doors with the public prosecutor, the defense attorney and the victim’s lawyer, she promised a suspended sentence of between one and a half and two years if the 37-year-old confessed to the crime would save a young woman from having to testify in court and pay her 10,000 euros as perpetrator-victim compensation.
In addition, the man now has to seek advice from a specialist outpatient clinic for sex offenders several times. He admitted to having tied up and raped the then just adult woman in a Munich hotel in 2018 after they went to the cinema together.
Both had met a few years earlier in Rosenheim, Upper Bavaria. The community officer working there as a youth pastor had offered his help to the young people suffering from depression. This had developed into a sexual relationship with the then 16-year-old. According to the agreement at the beginning of the trial, allegations of sexual abuse of a ward were dropped because the court did not believe that the victim had been entrusted to the man in a legal sense at the beginning of the relationship. Later, for example during the holiday camp and a group trip, the intimate contact already existed.
The relationship came to an end after the young woman revealed herself to her parents and the married pastor had changed parishes and later diocese. However, later there were more meetings. Because of the rape, the woman contacted a contact person from the diocese of Munich and Freising in 2020, who reported the man. At the same time he was released from his new diocese and later resigned. The presiding judge described the act as atypical for a church abuse case and the handling of the church as exemplary.