Five months after the killing of a ten-year-old girl in a children’s home in Wunsiedel, Upper Franconia, the public prosecutor’s office has brought charges against a 25-year-old man for rape. However, he should not be responsible for the girl’s death: According to the investigators, an eleven-year-old boy who is not yet of criminal responsibility is responsible, as the public prosecutor and the police announced on Tuesday.
According to the report, the man accused of the rape climbed into the facility through an open bathroom window on the night of April 4 in an attempt to commit theft. He “accidentally” met the girl and the boy. As a result, he raped the girl – in the presence of the boy, as a spokesman for the public prosecutor confirmed. The man has been in custody since the end of April.
He had not previously been convicted, i.e. had committed similar crimes in the past. A participation in the killing of the ten-year-old girl could not be proven. He admitted the rape.
The girl is said to have killed the boy after the man left the home. According to the findings of the police and the public prosecutor, he strangled the girl, as a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office in Hof told the German Press Agency on Tuesday. Before that, there had been a dispute between the two; he did not say what it was about. The boy is not expected to face criminal charges because of his age. At the age of eleven he is considered criminally responsible. He is in “safe custody”.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the man now accused of rape has confessed to other crimes in addition to the assault on the killed girl. The German from the Wunsiedel area is said to have stolen construction machinery worth around 16,000 euros during five burglaries in containers since the beginning of 2022 and sold it on the Internet. He only disputes the accusation that one of the containers was set on fire to remove traces.
More than 40 police officers were involved in the five-month investigation. The “Park” special commission evaluated several hundred traces – fingerprints, data carriers, DNA – and conducted more than 130 interrogations. By evaluating these traces and forensic reports, the investigators came to the two suspects. The boy had been suspected of having been involved in the crime just a few days after the girl’s death.
Whether there will be criminal consequences against caregivers from the home is open. Investigations into the complaint by a private individual about breaches of duty by the authorities responsible for the care of the children are ongoing.
Discussion offers for children and employees continue to exist
Immediately after the death became known, the sponsor of the St. Josef home, the Catholic youth welfare service of the diocese of Regensburg, set up a crisis team to look after the almost 90 children and young people aged between three and 19 years. Many of them were on a skiing holiday or with their families because of the Easter holidays, so they were not at the scene of the crime.
On Tuesday, the institution’s crisis management team announced that the offer of talks would continue to be maintained. The children and young people as well as the employees would continue to be “accompanied and cared for”, the measures “intensified as a precaution”, since the current report on the course of events “could again challenge all those involved in coping with the events”.