15 years in prison for attempted femicide

While government representatives met in Vienna on Tuesday for a violence protection summit and presented measures for women affected by male violence at a press conference, an attempted murder of a woman was being heard a few hundred meters away in the regional court for criminal matters. In the end, a 53-year-old was unanimously found guilty by a jury and sentenced to 15 years in prison. The judgment is not final.

Commitment to an institution for mentally abnormal lawbreakers

In addition, the hitherto blameless man was admitted to an institution for mentally abnormal lawbreakers. Court psychiatrist Peter Hofmann had certified that he was sane at the time of the crime. However, as a result of years of alcohol and benzodiazepine abuse, the man developed a personality disorder which, according to Hofmann, makes him dangerous and gives rise to fears that he will commit criminal offenses with serious consequences again in the future without the therapeutic measures that are guaranteed in detention placement in a special penal institution. The court (presiding: Wolfgang Etl) complied. After the verdict was announced, the 53-year-old asked for time to think things over, the prosecutor initially gave no explanation.

The ban on entering and approaching offered no protection

The case made it clear that a ban on entry and approach, even after the most recent tightening of the law, sometimes offers insufficient protection for women affected by domestic or male violence. Since January 1, 2022, a temporary ban on weapons has also been in effect for the endangering person with a ban on entering and approaching. The responsible district court can also order the vacating of the apartment in which the person concerned is registered by means of a temporary injunction. All of this was achieved by a 60-year-old woman who, after 23 years, had separated from her partner, who was seven years her junior, after he had become increasingly violent towards her.

The legal means did not offer her actual protection. The man kept showing up in front of her apartment in Vienna-Penzing and finally found her on July 4, 2022 in a passage to her house. According to the prosecution, when she came his way, he immediately attacked her, grabbed her, covered her mouth and stabbed her in the chest with a kitchen knife with a blade length of 12.5 centimeters. Then he ran away.

The woman was able to drag herself to a nearby bar and ask for help (“My husband stabbed me!”) before collapsing. “It is only thanks to a fortunate circumstance that she did not die in the form of a crime,” said the prosecutor at the regional court. The sting caused air and blood to enter the chest cavity, pericardium, and heart. According to the forensic report, the woman would have died without rapid emergency medical care. She had to be cared for in artificial deep sleep in the intensive care unit of a hospital for days before her survival was assured.

“She feared to a certain extent that this would happen,” the prosecutor said. The woman’s relationship was “normal for the longest time”. During the corona pandemic, however, the man began to drink more and more and became more jealous and aggressive. One day he banged the woman’s head against a door, another time he emptied boiling hot water over her forearm. On December 28, 2021, he grabbed her waist with a knife in his hand, looked into her eyes and said, “It’s over today!” Twelve days later, the terrified woman filed a complaint after he poured flammable liquid over her head and tried to set her hair on fire with a lighter. On this occasion he also asked the woman where she wanted to be buried.

While the 53-year-old continued to hang around in front of his ex-girlfriend’s apartment, despite the ban on entering and approaching him, the public prosecutor’s office discontinued the criminal proceedings against him for the reported acts of violence – “in case of doubt”, as the prosecutor now explained.

The accused and his defense attorney, Manfred Arbacher-Stöger, did not deny the stabbing, which would have made little sense given that the murder weapon with the woman’s blood and the man’s DNA on the knife handle had been secured not far from the scene of the crime. In addition, his mobile phone was logged into the transmission range of the 60-year-old’s apartment at the time of the crime. However, the two assured the jury that the man did not mean to kill his longtime partner. “He still loved her,” said Arbacher-Stöger. “I am not a murderer. I have not been a murderer. I love my wife,” said the accused. It is possible “that I did it (meaning: stabbed, note). But I can’t remember it”. He drank “a lot of alcohol” that day: “I’m missing three days, I can’t remember. I was home alone. I have cancer. I had problems.”

From the man’s point of view, the relationship wasn’t over, as he explained at the end of his interrogation: “It wasn’t ended because we met in a bar in June and had a drink.” Letters that he wanted to send from prison to the 60-year-old – in a letter he apologized for the criminal act – were not accepted by the woman.