The allegations made by a 16-year-old student against her former teacher weigh heavily: he is said to have hugged her several times with sexual intent and grabbed her buttocks. The whole thing is said to have happened in a vocational training facility in the western district. The 44-year-old man had to answer for this on Wednesday before the Ebersberg district court. According to the public prosecutor, at the beginning of March last year, the subject teacher twice assaulted his student by touching her inappropriately. According to the lawyer, the accused acted with sexual intent, and the victim felt he had been bothering him.
However, the teacher denied these allegations in court. “I didn’t pat her on the bottom,” he says. Rather, it was the case that the student had her last day in his training station. So he hugged her from the side and told her how well she had done at work over the past few weeks. He didn’t think anything of it and was therefore all the more surprised when he heard about the allegations against him. “It was completely incomprehensible to me,” said the 44-year-old.
The trainees need intensive supervision
The court around chairman Dieter Kaltbeitzer finally wanted to know more details about the relationship between the student and the accused. This was completely normal, no different than other trainees, said the man. In such a facility for young people with learning disabilities, every trainee has his/her previous history. “The young people often have no contact persons at home,” said the accused. Therefore, the relationship with the trainers is automatically closer. In principle, however, he keeps his distance from his students. Regarding the allegations that the former student has now made against him, he said: “You probably don’t even know what it means if I’m convicted.”
And in fact, the allegedly injured party and her friend gave the impression in court that the scope of their statements was not entirely clear to them. The teacher hugged her four or five times and grabbed her buttocks, the 16-year-old claimed in an uncertain voice. “I have no idea why he did that,” she said. However, she was unable to give any further details on the exact course of events. And when the prosecutor asked why she sent her teacher a friend request on Facebook after the alleged crime, she didn’t really know how to answer. That was an accident.
The appearance of the girlfriend, who claimed to have directly observed several attacks, seemed similarly uncertain. She also could not remember any details about the deeds. “I’m very bad at remembering things,” said the 20-year-old to judge Kaltbeitzer. However, she is certain that she has seen at least two incidents. However, she did not know exactly how the teacher should have hugged the student. However, she accused the defendant of having committed similar acts to another student. She also observed that directly.
The court does not believe the two students
The other student, however, was also summoned as a witness in court – and denied there that there had ever been any assaults on the part of the teacher. “Nothing ever happened to me,” said the 22-year-old. On the contrary, she always had a completely normal relationship with him. Unlike the student who reported the alleged assaults: She was unreliable and always said a lot that wasn’t true. “It has never occurred to me that he has ever misbehaved towards students or interns,” she said of the accused.
There was also little evidence for the public prosecutor, defense attorneys and judges that the 44-year-old was actually guilty of anything. Especially since he presented a psychiatric report on the allegedly injured person through his lawyer, in which the suitability of her testimony is strongly questioned. Even the public prosecutor admitted that the testimonies of the two witnesses for the prosecution were characterized by “innumerable contradictions” and “extremely inaccurate representations”.
In any case, judge Dieter Kaltbeitzer did not find the evidence sufficient for a conviction, although he had a stale aftertaste: “Ultimately, I don’t know what actually happened.” The testimonies of the witnesses were simply not of the quality to refute the statement of the defendant.