This time for an article in which he described the allegations of sexual harassment made against him by his ex-employees Raphaela Scharf and Katia Wagner as “fictitious”. However, only the media group “Austria” has to compensate the two women with 10,000 euros each. The judgment is not final.
Fellner wrote articles in his own defense
The subject of the hearing was an article written by Fellner himself, which appeared last year in the newspaper “Österreich” and the free newspaper “oe24” and with which he responded to allegations of sexual harassment by several women – which he vehemently denies. In it he writes that the allegations made against him by two Krone TV presenters are fictitious. He faced slander and a smear campaign aimed at halting the company’s success.
The intended Krone TV presenters, Scharf and Wagner, then complained to Fellner about defamation. At the hearing on Wednesday, the accused was represented by lawyer Georg Zanger as the ruler. In this capacity, Fellner’s lawyer testified that after the allegations of sexual harassment made public against him, he was “not treated gently”. The “Kronen Zeitung” wrote about him as “Mini-Weinstein” and thus assumed that he was a rapist. The allegations could not possibly have gone unanswered, the article should be understood as a “retortion”, Zanger said for Fellner. “Freely invented” is meant as “freely felt”. “If I wanted to tell a lie, I would have said a lie.” Nevertheless, he would choose a different term today, said the lawyer for the media maker.
The judge saw with the article “very clearly” the facts of defamation (paragraph 111 paragraph 1 and 2 of the Criminal Code) and found Fellner guilty. Since the “Austria” publisher had already been sentenced in February by the Vienna Higher Regional Court (OLG) to a partial fine of 120,000 euros for defamation in a similar matter, the judge refrained from an additional penalty. The media group “Österreich” must compensate Scharf and Wagner for the publication of the article in “Österreich” and “oe24” with 10,000 euros each and publish the judgment in the media. However, this is not legally binding, since the lawyers of both sides did not give any explanation. Wolfgang Fellner also did not want to comment on the verdict against the APA.
In a second hearing on Wednesday, Fellner appeared as a plaintiff. He took action at the Vienna Regional Court for Civil Law Matters against three audio recordings secretly made by Wagner, which he felt violated his fundamental right to secrecy. One of these played a key role in his first conviction for defamation. It was only after Wagner’s lawyer, Michael Rami, brought it up in court in November of the previous year that the media maker admitted that he had misrepresented to the daily newspaper “Der Standard” a memorandum made by Wagner, including allegations of harassment about a dinner with him, as “free invented”.
During the trial, Wagner stated that he had taken the three recordings from 2015 for “documentation reasons” because nobody else would have believed her the allegations of sexual harassment. She only sent the sound recordings to her lawyer Rami, she no longer has them herself and has “nothing at all” to do with them.
Fellner’s lawyer, Georg Zanger, was interested in why Wagner, if she felt so harassed, reacted to Fellner’s messages with heart emojis in the chat history. Wagner stated that as a 26-year-old she first had to “find her way” into the situation at the time. At first she tried to find a polite way out of the situation. “How do you answer a manager who writes to you that you are so horny that you should be taken as a luxury hostage?” says Wagner. Later she appeared more distant.
Zanger doubted that and argued that years later Wagner still exchanged messages with Fellner and wrote him, for example, that they were going to the sauna or that they should meet again for dinner. Wagner said that she thought he had changed. She also wanted to develop a good relationship with someone who runs a large media company. “Like half of Austria, I was afraid that he would ruin my career, that I wouldn’t find a job anywhere. I no longer have that fear,” says Wagner.
During the subsequent questioning of Fellner, this time he personally stated that he “not at all” had the feeling that he had bothered Wagner. On the contrary, she was pushy, almost bombarded him with phone calls and invited him to her apartment several times, which he refused. In general, it was “very strange” that “someone who accuses me of sexual harassment wanted to build a relationship again,” said the “Austria” editor. Wagner’s lawyer then tried to question Fellner’s credibility with further chat excerpts.
The judge considered the matter to be adjudicated. The judgment is in writing.
Source: Nachrichten
