21-year-old threatened his girlfriend with publishing a sex video

Because he couldn’t come to terms with his girlfriend’s separation, he threatened the woman – a devout Muslim – with forwarding nude photos to her brother and publishing a sex video that he had made during the relationship.

The previously innocent man was accused of dangerous threats, coercion and persistent persecution because, according to the prosecution, he repeatedly attended the 21-year-old’s university courses in order to be near her. “She was a fellow student, so you see each other,” the defendant remarked. The man, who appeared without legal representation, justified the fact that he sent WhatsApp messages containing threats to the young woman with “pure emotion”. The 21-year-old said to the legal trainee, who was only a few years older than him and who led the trial under judicial supervision as part of her training: “Let me look at it from a bird’s eye view. I’m 21, I have two companies, I earn 300,000 to 400,000 Euros a year and I have a shop on Kärntner Straße. What do you want from me? I’ve never hit anyone. My history is clean. The matter is over, it’s over.”

“If I find out you’re writing to someone else, you’ll be dead”

The IT expert then described how he had been with his girlfriend for four years before she dumped him: “We had been a couple since 16. After the separation, I had a lot of stress. I work 70 hours a week. My Mother is very sick. I needed someone to chat with. She was the only girl I had contact with.” That’s why he wrote to her.

However, that didn’t always sound friendly. “If I find out you’re writing to someone else, you’ll be dead,” one text message said. The defendant speculated that 80 percent of all abandoned men would think something like that but would not seriously consider it. Which was decisively rejected by judge Andreas Hebenstreit-Weinauer.

“Very psychologically stressed”

The ex-girlfriend of the same age reported the young man to a police station in January. Since then, she reported as a witness that she had been calm: “I was emotionally very afraid of him. I was very mentally stressed.” But she wasn’t afraid “that he would get physically close to me.”

In the end, the defendant was acquitted of the persistent persecution because the conditions were not present that would have justified the assumption that the young woman’s lifestyle was being unreasonably impaired. With regard to the coercion and dangerous threats, the criminal proceedings were conducted in a diversionary manner. The 21-year-old avoided conviction by accepting the payment of legal costs of 150 euros, a probationary period of two years during which he was not allowed to commit any wrongdoing, probation assistance and the instruction to undergo anti-aggression training. In return, he continues to be considered blameless and the complaint against him has been dropped for the time being. The public prosecutor did not provide any explanation and the diversionary approach is therefore not legally binding.