Rapes of children ordered: 4 years in prison for Innviertler

The verdict is: four years in prison for rape and serious sexual abuse of minors as a designated perpetrator, as well as for depictions of child abuse. Among other things, he is said to have paid money to rape a 15-year-old on camera. The verdict is not final.

The previously blameless electrician – he is married and has an adult daughter – is said to have initially chatted rather trivially with women in the Philippines and watched live shows, according to the prosecutor. A contact woman on site recognized that he was obviously interested in children and offered to abuse children on camera. Over a period of four years, the man is said to have consumed live chats and images in return for money, and finally suggested raping a 15-year-old on camera. The defendant justified himself by saying he said this “just for fun”. According to the prosecutor, however, he was well aware that the contact woman would do it.

Paedophile ring uncovered

The pedophile ring was uncovered in the course of international investigations. The woman has already been sentenced to a long prison term and four children have been rescued from her clutches. The Austrian was arrested in 2023 and is currently in custody. According to his defense attorney Andreas Mauhart, he “felt it more like a computer game at the time” and was not aware “that it was reality elsewhere.” His client has confessed and is in therapy.

• also read: Child abuse via webcam: Innviertel district administrator in custody

“Now I can say I can be disgusting,” said the defendant himself, adding that he understood “what is being done to children.” At the same time, he claims that he was not serious about ordering the rape. The woman in the Philippines sent him the video of the rape without asking. “I wrote that, but I never wanted it to be carried out,” he claimed, to the astonishment of the prosecutor – the defendant had, after all, been sent videos of the abuse. “How could you have believed that this was fiction?”

Confession not credible

The judge did not find the confession credible: “These actions were presented to the defendant as real,” he should have known that it was not fiction. The chats showed that even the contact woman was “perplexed by the defendant’s wishes.” “We in the West are entrusting the poor people in the East with the abuse,” he said, seeing this as a “particularly serious injustice of the mind.” With a sentence of one to ten years, the sentence was four years in prison. The defense and the prosecution made no statement, so the verdict is not legally binding.

The case of abuse of Filipino children is not the only one currently pending at the regional court in Ried. Since the end of January, an office manager who is said to have used a computer belonging to the municipality for his crimes has been awaiting trial in pre-trial detention. In November of the previous year, a 37-year-old man in Wels was sentenced to 15 years in prison and placed in a forensic therapeutic center. He is said to have abused four girls in Upper Austria, collected thousands of child abuse images since 2017, and commissioned and viewed abuse in Southeast Asia in live chats.