Wunsiedel case: Investigations against home carers and youth welfare offices stopped – Bavaria

A year and a half after the violent death of a girl in a dormitory in Wunsiedel, Upper Franconia, the Hof public prosecutor’s office closed its investigation into possible violations of duties of care and upbringing “due to a lack of sufficient suspicion”. A spokesman announced this on Tuesday.

From the perspective of the public prosecutor’s office, “the tragic events” – the rape of the girl by a then 25-year-old and her later killing by a roommate who was eleven at the time – were not caused by any wrongdoing by those responsible at the authorities or in the home, but rather “not expected circumstances”.

After the girl’s death, the Hof public prosecutor’s office received various criminal complaints against those responsible at the children’s home, the youth welfare offices involved and the family court for breach of duty of care and upbringing and bodily harm. “A comprehensive clarification of the procedures that led to the placement of the two children in a home, as well as the care of the children in the children’s home, did not confirm the general allegations made by the complainant,” the public prosecutor’s office said. Neither the responsible youth welfare offices breached their duties of care or upbringing when looking after the girl or the boy.

The forms of care selected by the respective offices – in the boy’s case the Hof city youth welfare office and the Kulmbach district youth welfare office, and the Tirschenreuth youth welfare office for the girl – corresponded to “the children’s living situation”. The girl had stayed away from class as a result of a dispute between her parents, who lived separately, about the right type of school for her and was therefore placed in the St. Josef Home in Wunsiedel in November 2022. The boy, who was traumatized from his childhood, had previously lived in various homes and came to the accommodation in the fall of the same year after a stay at the Bayreuth District Hospital.

:Fatal chain of errors

A boy prone to violence is placed in a children’s home in Wunsiedel. Then a ten-year-old dies there. The twelve-year-old confesses to having killed the girl. Now the public prosecutor’s office is trying to identify those responsible for this human drama.

Text: Max Weinhold, Illustration: Stefan Dimitrov

There, in particular, in the Wunsiedler home, there were “no indications that he was an acute danger to himself or others.” According to SZ information, this was previously the case in the Bayreuth district clinic. The public prosecutor’s office did not initially comment on this when asked on Tuesday. The boy was “placed in a special education group at the children’s home in accordance with the recommendations”. “Especially due to the boy’s personality structure, the children’s home provided extensive care that went beyond the usual care.” As the director of the home testified in court, the boy lived in a smaller group so that the educators could devote more attention to him.

There, too, in the home, no breaches of duty could have been found. This also applies to a bathroom window on the ground floor of the home, which was presumably left open by a carer and through which the man entered the home. “From a criminal law perspective, it cannot be affirmed that employees have violated their duty of care towards the children in their care.” Furthermore, there is “a lack of direct attribution” between a breach of duty of care and the subsequent sexual assault on the girl and her killing.

A man broke into the dormitory at night and raped the girl

How As an extensive trial at the Hof regional court revealed at the beginning of this year, the adult, himself a former resident of the St. Josef Home in Wunsiedel, was in financial difficulties while looking for disposable electrical devices on the night of the 3rd to the 4th. In April 2023, he broke into the accommodation and came across the mentally ill boy. The court was convinced that the man and the boy then had a conversation about sexual content, whereupon the adult masturbated in front of the child. He then brought the girl into his room, who, as he admitted in court, the man then raped.

According to the court, the boy and the girl got into an argument a little later, when the man had already fled, and the then eleven-year-old strangled the ten-year-old. The boy testified in court that he had been forced into the crime by the man. However, a psychological expert did not attach any credibility to these statements. The court sentenced the man to seven and a half years in prison for, among other things, rape. The public prosecutor’s office lodged an appeal against this, but later withdrew it. The appeal of the boy who killed the girl, but who also appeared as a co-plaintiff in the proceedings for sexual abuse by the man, is still ongoing.

The Hof public prosecutor’s office has closed proceedings against the convicted man on suspicion of possession of child pornographic content, as confirmed to the SZ. From their point of view, a possible conviction in this case would not have any aggravating impact on the sentence of seven and a half years in prison that has already been served. The child pornography content on his devices is “individual images,” not large data sets. In the court case, an expert certified that the father of two had so-called secondary pedophilia. This means that although he has a preference for children, he can also feel sexual excitement without their (mental) presence.

When asked by the SZ, the lawyer for the father of the girl who was killed initially did not want to comment on the discontinuation of the proceedings. She said she had not yet received access to the files.

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