The accused was undoubtedly dissatisfied with this judge’s verdict. “You have sentenced me even though I am innocent,” the man explained through his translator. Judge Vera Hörauf had found the man guilty of “unauthorized possession of child pornography”. All because of a 21-second clip about which the defendant said, “I never saw the video.”
The 37-year-old’s problem: In the eyes of the public prosecutor and, ultimately, the judge, he owned the video – and that was what it was all about on Tuesday afternoon in front of the Ebersberg district court. Investigations had revealed that in July 2019 a video via the WhatsApp intelligence service landed on a cell phone that the police were able to assign to the name of the accused.
The video shows an unclothed boy
The video shows a little boy with an unclothed crotch. It was made by the father of the then three-year-old, who finally sent it to the accused, among others. The father had also published the video on the online networks Facebook and Tiktok, which gave a much wider public access to it at times. The 32-year-old father of the child had already been sentenced by the same court in April to an eight-month suspended sentence and a fine of 1000 euros.
The background to both processes, in which the public prosecutor’s office is investigating child pornography, is quite curious. Because: Both the sender and the recipient of the video are reportedly not sex offenders. Both are from Bulgaria and were work colleagues at the time, this is important to understand the likely intention of the video. According to the statements of the father summoned as a witness, it is common among the Turkish minority in Bulgaria for fathers to show their young sons’ genitals to relatives on the occasion of the circumcision festival. The witness apologized at the trial on Tuesday, stating, “I didn’t know it was forbidden.”
The judge does not believe the accused
Judge Vera Hörauf confirmed this prohibition with her verdict. In the sense of: Possibly a louder intention does not protect against punishment if the result can be misunderstood. The fact that the police discovered neither the cell phone nor the fateful video during the house search of the defendant in the northern district of Ebersberg did not help the 37-year-old. The judge did not believe him that he had “lost his cell phone a long time” when the video was sent. Not even his explanation: “I never saw the video.”
On the other hand, the judge did take the circumstances of the Bulgarian ritual into account – when assessing the sentence. The defendant also benefited from the fact that he had not previously appeared under criminal law. The prosecutor had demanded a fine of 90 daily rates of 40 euros each. The defense attorney had requested acquittal. Judge Hörauf came to the result of 60 daily rates of 30 euros each. The defendant and his defense attorney made hints in the courtroom that they should appeal in order to obtain a milder sentence.