This judgment goes out to all men who think that when it’s Oktoberfest you can grope women. The district court has now sentenced a man from the Munich area to a fine of 6,400 euros for two tricks on a young lady’s bottom. Until the end he had assured himself that he would never do such a thing. But in the end, district judge Sebastian Schmitt was “convinced that it was so.”
It was supposed to be a fun Sunday at the Oktoberfest, the student Luisa T. (Name changed) and her boyfriend had arranged to meet two friends in the Augustiner festival tent. Towards the evening, three gentlemen sat down at the table with them, “they just toasted each other,” Luisa T. tells the court, “nothing else.”
At some point she came from the toilet when two or three of the men were standing in the aisle in front of the Oktoberfest table and she had to get past them. Someone grabbed her bottom. “I quickly took a step to the side,” she says, and then the second trick came. The 21-year-old says she was totally confused afterwards. “I didn’t know what to do. I was wondering what had happened.” A little later, the pince-nez leaned over to her and called out something like “yes, sorry.” “I didn’t want to say anything,” the student continued, “I didn’t know how they would react.” As a precaution, she took a cell phone photo of the man.
But after a few minutes she couldn’t stand being in the tent anymore and went outside with her boyfriend. “I just cried and wanted to go home,” she says. But her friend said she should go to Safe Space, a facility at the Oktoberfest where girls and women are helped in all emergencies. There she calmed down, “and I was advised to file a complaint.”
They went back to the tent with the police, where 49-year-old Stefan W. was still celebrating with his friends. He had to go to the Wiesnwache, where he was treated “not nicely,” as the defendant says. He had drunk about four pints of beer at the time. Why the police carried out an alcohol test on Luisa T. but not on Stefan W. remains a secret.
The defendant’s friends take the witness stand. “It’s a mystery to me, it was nothing,” one assures. Nothing seen, nothing heard. And anyway, they left earlier. It’s not just this statement that makes co-plaintiff lawyer Antje Brandes’ hats go up. According to the police, all three men were still in the tent after the incident. “It’s simply not possible to grab a woman’s private parts, even multiple times,” she says in her plea.
Defense attorney Holger Schewe goes so far as to say that the woman was wearing a dirndl, “so you can’t understand how a trick would have had any effect, in contrast to leggings.” He wants an acquittal.
Prosecutor Christian Lohr sees no contradictions in the witness’s statement. “She actually wanted to go home, there’s no reason to falsely incriminate someone she doesn’t know.” Judge Sebastian Schmitt also sees it that way. He imposes 80 daily rates of 80 euros each, and W. also has to bear the costs of the proceedings and the expenses of the co-plaintiff.