The scam sounds perfidious: a 58-year-old man is said to have forced two young Nepalese women to have sex under the pretext that the German authorities would demand this, otherwise the women would be deported. And he is said to have claimed that only he is authorized to carry out the relevant “tests”. Before the Munich I District Court, Karan D. now assured that the sex was consensual and that he had an affair with both women. The public prosecutor, however, accuses the man of rape in eleven cases.
Karan D. met the two women in 2015 at an event organized by the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith community in Munich. They had recently come to Germany from Nepal, without relatives or friends, and spoke hardly any German. As the public prosecutor puts it in their indictment, both had problems with their legal status as foreign nationals and lived in constant fear of having to leave Germany again. The accused D. and his wife, both from Bhutan and speaking Nepali, took care of the women.
The accused is said to have fabricated letters from authorities and phone calls
D. announced through his lawyer Sabrina Philipps at the start of the process that his family had taken care of the two. Be it with Bible studies, when applying for a job or with official matters. According to the public prosecutor, the victims trusted D. that he was “a kind of father figure” for them. In addition, there was certainly also the fact that among Jehovah’s Witnesses, women and children have to submit to the head of the family.
At the beginning of 2018 – at that time both women are said to have entered into sham marriages – D. is said to have started to create a climate of fear: The immigration authorities, the health department and the health insurance company would demand proof that the women in Germany had sex as proof that they would have a real marriage in Germany. Without proof, they would be threatened with deportation. He was authorized to take samples after sexual acts and leave them as evidence to the authorities. D. is said to have sent the women fictitious letters from the authorities, called them on various telephone numbers and attached an alleged authority sticker to their apartment door in Garching.
Independently of each other, Karan D. is said to have played porn for both women in their apartment in Garching and demanded that they dress, make up and behave the same way as in the films. The Nepalese women are said to have resisted the sexual intercourse and tried to push D. away. He is said to have held her hands and raped the women. Then he is said to have taken “samples” from the victims with cotton swabs and packed them in glasses he had taken with him.
D. claims to have had an affair with both women
Only after about a year, when D. put a fictitious police seal on the women’s door in Garching, did the women become suspicious. They confided in each other – and reported D. to the police. According to the public prosecutor, the women were “persistently mentally impaired and frightened”.
While the women’s video statements were played behind closed doors, D. denied the allegations through his lawyer. His family took care of the women with advice and action and also financial means. Only when one of them had problems with the immigration authorities did the contact intensify, which resulted in an affair. Likewise with the other woman. He finally ended the affair because his wife found out about it. How the women came to the allegations, he could not explain. D. has meanwhile been expelled from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The trial is scheduled to end in January.