The case of US actor Johnny Depp against his colleague and ex-wife Amber Heard has been showing us in detail for some time how complex and emotional processes can be in which testimony stands against testimony and which then also involves violence. Who is lying, who is telling the truth and how can the countless pieces of evidence be weighted? Everyone quickly has their own opinion on this, but probably very few would dare to judge.
For several weeks, a case has been negotiated at the Ebersberg district court that has fewer viewers, but is similar. The owner of a clothing store in the northern district was accused of sexually harassing several employees for years. Some witnesses confirmed this, others denied it, and there was no clear evidence in one direction or the other.
Judge Hörauf: The ad has “completely come true”
Judge Vera Hörauf found the accused guilty on Monday afternoon of sexually harassing two former employees in 56 cases. In the verdict, she largely followed the arguments of the public prosecutor. She sees the charges as “fully true”.
In their closing arguments, the public prosecutor’s office described a system in which “the relationship between boss and employee was clearly exploited,” according to the prosecutor. “There was groping and thrusting movements performed as in sexual intercourse and the acts were subsequently dismissed as fun, made ridiculous.”
Both the judge and the prosecutor found little to gain from the arguments put forward by the defense during the course of the trial and in the closing arguments. The prosecutor spoke of “smoke candles” that the three defense attorneys had lit, for example by focusing on a city visit by one of the prosecution witnesses the day after a serious assault.
Neither the public prosecutor nor Judge Vera Hörauf saw the “plot” that was allegedly hatched by various witnesses in order to “finish” the accused and force a high severance payment in a labor court process, as a defense attorney explained realistic. “It is unlikely that all prosecution witnesses lied,” said the Ebersberger chairwoman. The court did not see the “zeal to incriminate” that the defense accused the witnesses who had testified against the accused.
30,000 euros fine for the accused
The judge also disagreed with other aspects of the defense strategy. For example, the two most important witnesses, who had also filed a criminal complaint, “were tortured for hours during the interrogation. I’ve never experienced anything like it.” Nevertheless, they parried the advances of the defense without contradiction.
Hörauf, on the other hand, assumed that one could not believe the deputy management, who had made a “meteoric rise” in their early twenties, nor an employee who was obviously intimidated.
Finally, the judge refused to accept statements from the defense that “as a woman” you have to remember certain things – such as a wedding program on television when your girlfriend is planning her own wedding. The defense also argued that the behavior of one of the witnesses was atypical, “You don’t do that when you’ve just been harassed.” Hörauf dryly pointed out that one should not judge others by oneself and that people react differently to border crossings.
In the end, the judge sentenced the accused to a fine of 120 daily rates of 250 euros each, i.e. a total of 30,000 euros. He also has to bear the costs of the proceedings.