Abuse by teachers: First report lost in the mail to Upper Austria?

In connection with an abuse case involving a sports teacher who is said to have abused a number of boys between the ages of nine and 14 at a Vienna middle school before his suicide in May 2019, an initial report against the serial perpetrator may have been lost in the mail. The spokesman for the Wiener Neustadt public prosecutor’s office, Erich Habitzl, confirmed a newspaper report to the APA on Thursday evening.

Investigations against officials

The Wiener Neustädter prosecution had investigated two police officers for abuse of office in connection with the violation of the complaint. A former participant in a summer holiday camp at Lake Wolfgangsee, where the Viennese teacher worked as an extracurricular holiday supervisor during the summer months between 1990 and 2010, had already gone to the police in 2013 and filed a complaint against the teacher at an office in Lower Austria. The man, who was already an adult at the time, said the man had abused him during a massage. Although the teacher was subsequently questioned as a suspect, this case never went to court. The teacher, who, in addition to teaching physical education, also worked in a basketball club, had the opportunity to continue practicing his job and to stay in contact with the boys in his care.

As it has now emerged in the course of the public prosecutor’s investigation, the first report was probably sent away by the officials in Lower Austria to Upper Austria – the responsible federal state due to the alleged crime scene. But she never got there. “It may have been lost in the mail,” said the spokesman for the Wiener Neustadt public prosecutor’s office to the APA. However, Habitzl said that the police officers who were suspected of abuse of office in connection with the disappearance of the report were “not able to knowingly abuse their authority”: “In addition to the accused, numerous witnesses were interviewed. There was no evidence of misconduct.” From the perspective of the public prosecutor’s office, the complaint was probably “lost” in Upper Austria, although the details of the circumstances could no longer be clarified: “That was ten years ago.”

Consequently, according to the Wiener Neustadt public prosecutor’s office, the proceedings would have had to be stopped even if there had been evidence of criminally relevant misconduct. “It would have expired by now,” explained Habitzl.

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