Abuse case in Vienna: Ministry of Justice demands information report

In the case of abuse involving a physical education teacher who, until his suicide in May 2019, abused and photographed or filmed at least 40 underage boys at a Viennese middle school over a period of 15 years, the Ministry of Justice requested an information report from the public prosecutor’s office in Wiener Neustadt by way of specialist supervision. There, a complaint of abuse of office was filed in order to clarify how a first complaint against the educator could “bog up”.

Victim lawyer Herta Bauer, who represents several victims of abuse in this sensational case, had asked Justice Minister Alma Zadic (Greens) in mid-November, among other things, to clarify what happened to this first complaint against the sports teacher in 2013 is. A former participant in a holiday camp on Lake Wolfgang had reported sexual abuse – allegedly in the course of a massage – to a police station in Lower Austria against the teacher who worked as a supervisor in the camp during the summer months. According to the Lower Austrian State Criminal Police Office, the statement of facts was then sent to the local law enforcement authorities – but to this day it has apparently not been picked up by any public prosecutor’s office.

If the complaint had been processed in accordance with the law and if the Viennese teacher had been accused of sexual abuse, he presumably would not have been able to continue teaching at the Vienna middle school and a neighboring elementary school and pursue his pedophilic inclinations in the school area until May 2019. Criminal investigations against the educator only started when an ex-pupil in Vienna reported him in April 2019. After the teacher’s suicide at the end of May of the same year, the investigation against the sports teacher, who was popular at his school, was dropped by the Vienna public prosecutor’s office. “Der Standard” was the first to report on the investigation initiated into the mysterious disappearance of the ad placed in 2013.

The Viennese Director of Education, Heinrich Himmer, advocated the introduction of a uniform legal basis throughout Austria for a “reporting chain” in cases of suspected abuse in the education sector. You have to “look at it very carefully in detail and think about what we can do,” said Minister of Justice Zadic on Tuesday when asked at a press conference on the protection against violence summit. What came to light in connection with the school abuse case “is unbelievable,” she said. “We must do everything we can to prevent such things,” said the minister.