The seemingly inconspicuous man enters the courtroom and looks briefly at the audience. His handcuffs are loosened. On the third day of the trial, the presiding judge Martin Hofmann asked the former police officer how he was doing now? “According to the circumstances,” said the confessed defendant on Tuesday, who has been in custody for 14 months as a suspected sex offender. A few hours later, the 4th Juvenile Chamber of the Munich II Regional Court sentenced him to four years and ten months in prison.
The Gautinger is found guilty of sexual abuse in 200 cases and of serious sexual abuse in 16 cases with intentional physical harm to his 17-year-old stepdaughter. He also had to answer for possession of child and youth pornographic image files that investigators discovered on his digital devices at home. The defendant accepted the verdict because the sentence exceeded the request of his defense attorneys by only ten months. In contrast, the prosecutor and the co-prosecutor’s attorney for the affected family had demanded a prison sentence of eight years and three months. The prosecutor left open the possibility of appealing. To protect the underage victim, the pleadings were held behind closed doors.
The girl did not have to testify before her tormentor
The accused had made a confession to the police at an early stage. This saved the girl from having to appear before her tormentor at the trial. The statements of the wards, who had been abused by the accused between the ages of nine and 15, were recorded by an investigating judge. The videos were not shown to the public in public.
The presiding judge justified the verdict by saying that the accused also faced the situation during the trial and fully admitted his actions and guilt – and also wanted to start therapy immediately. The judge emphasized that he was also willing to seek compensation for the damage caused. Because the accused had transferred 10,000 euros in compensation to the victim. The court assessed the offender-victim settlement (TOA) positively. It stressed that this was neither a “bailout nor a trial tactic” to perhaps get away with a lighter sentence.
The court also counted the fact that the former police officer was dealing with the multitude of his crimes, which had become more and more intense over the years, as a mitigating factor. According to the prosecution, the man first gained the child’s trust with a playful fight when he put him to bed. The sexual assaults then became more violent, especially in a hotel room four years ago during a musical trip to Bochum. According to the indictment, the 15-year-old girl was helplessly at the mercy of the perpetrator, who also “purposefully exploited” this situation.
The process also addressed the question of why all this could happen? Because the man from Gauting, who lived with the victim’s mother in his second marriage, was part of the family and otherwise integrated and financially secure. Now the ex-police officer has not only been in prison for years, but has also lost his pension. “I think it’s really bad what happened,” the accused said in tears on the first day of the trial. And he assured that he did not want to hurt his stepdaughter.
On Tuesday, his defense attorneys delivered a letter of apology to the victim’s attorney. Whether the girl reads the perpetrator’s letter is uncertain.