After the alleged rape of a 22-year-old student early on Friday morning, the Munich University of Applied Sciences (HM) has announced a review of its security concept. The woman was in a study on Lothstrasse in Neuhausen on Thursday evening to study. As the evening progressed she became tired and lay down on a couch where she fell asleep. A 25-year-old security service employee found her there at around 5:30 a.m. on Friday morning. According to the police, the man lay down next to the sleeping woman, first performed sexual acts on her and finally raped her.
When the alleged perpetrator disappeared again, the student went to the ground floor of the building, where she met an acquaintance. She told him what had just happened to her; he called the police. They were able to arrest the security man at the crime scene. As it turned out, he had previously come to the attention of the police because of exhibitionism.
The university explained on Tuesday that it was not aware of the man’s background – “otherwise we would definitely not have accepted him.” He was employed by a company that provided facility management, including security services. The company checks employees according to the tasks assigned to them. “As far as we know, the alleged perpetrator has not been checked.”
The university itself does not carry out checks on employees of external companies unless there is a specific suspicion or reason: “In principle, it is the responsibility of the commissioned company to only employ reliable employees in accordance with the legal requirements.” The trade regulations stipulate that employees of security services must prove their reliability. In the case of crimes against sexual self-determination, among other things, reliability is usually rejected – but only if the crime occurred less than five years ago. It was not possible to find out on Tuesday whether this was the case with the man at Munich University.
The university said there were discussions with the external security company on Tuesday about the consequences of what happened. Among other things, it was agreed that in the future HM would only accept employees with a perfect police certificate – which, conversely, means that a separate check will now be introduced, at least as far as the documents that the service provider presents are concerned. If the review of the security concept reveals further deficiencies, these should be remedied as quickly as possible.