A high school teacher from the district of Munich exchanged sexual desires and fantasies with an underage student in an online chat for months. The 15-year-old also sent him a variety of image files and videos showing her naked. Because he used it to procure youth pornography, the educator was finally sentenced to a ten-month suspended sentence. The case may also have serious disciplinary consequences for the 51-year-old: Because the Free State of Bavaria, as the employer, has brought a disciplinary action with the aim of removing the high school teacher from the civil service. The 51-year-old has had to answer to the disciplinary chamber at the Munich Administrative Court since Wednesday.
In March 2020, having found out about the chat, the girl’s parents contacted the management of the school where the teacher taught. The school reported the incident to the Ministry of Education. This in turn turned to the disciplinary authority at the Bavarian state prosecutor’s office. During a house search, police investigators found 80 photo and 54 video files with erotic images that the 15-year-old had taken of herself on the teacher’s cell phone.
The student and the teacher met in the 2017/2018 school year. During this time, the 51-year-old is said to have hugged her twice after a query. A little later, the 15-year-old sent him a friend request via Facebook. With the educator accepting them, the two exchanged a variety of sexualized chat messages throughout 2018. From December 2018 to January 2019, the student also sent erotic photos and videos of herself to the 51-year-old. The chat ended with the student being instructed in the “protection ward” of a clinic. The court did not provide more detailed information on this. The disciplinary authority accuses the teacher, who was suspended after the allegations became known, of having encouraged the 15-year-old to “produce pornographic footage of herself”.
The log of the messages comprises a total of 136 pages
The 51-year-old’s lawyer emphasized that the chat messages were sent by the student. It was a “distance relationship”. Last but not least, the lawyer said, the student showed “calm behavior” during her interrogations on the case. When she was back in class for a few days at the end of January 2019, she and her teacher are said to have deleted the entire chat history from their phones. According to an IT report by the disciplinary authority, the photos and videos of the 15-year-old were still on the teacher’s cell phone in May 2019 when the police confiscated it.
Since the disciplinary authority and the teacher’s lawyer could not see a 136-page log of the chat messages prepared by the prosecutor’s office, the hearing will continue at the end of the year. The representative of the prosecutor’s office said the minutes could not be read in public hearings. Otherwise there is a risk that “the dissemination of pornographic writings is punishable by law”.
The high school teacher has been in an exceptional psychological situation since the investigation. He said he was treated in a psychiatric hospital and is currently undergoing therapy.