10-year-old bullies Pasching

There are supposedly videos showing the boy breaking windows or driving through the community in a stolen fire department training car. In a shopping center, he is said to have spat at, scratched and kicked security guards. The municipality of Pasching is now placing increased emphasis on supervising the minor boy.

“There is a lot of discontent in the town,” said Pasching Mayor Markus Hofko (ÖVP) in an interview with the “Kurier,” because “something happens here every other day.” The boy has lived in the town since last year, when he moved to a care facility. Many of the children in care had traumatic experiences in their early years, violence and insecure social relationships, it was said. A further transfer of the ten-year-old from Pasching would therefore only reopen old wounds, warn his teachers.

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According to Reinhold Rampler, deputy group leader of the Upper Austrian Child and Youth Services, his organization currently looks after around 277,000 children in the state. Of these, a good 900 are in facilities like the one in Pasching, where the young “system breaker” has found a temporary home. They now want to look after him even more intensively – in a positive sense: First of all, the state of Upper Austria has provided the boy with a second 24-hour carer.

Mayor Hofko welcomes this step: “This is a unique child who causes unique problems, so unique measures are needed.” The boy cannot yet be prosecuted legally, after all he is not criminally responsible until he is 14 years old. Reinhold Rampler does not think that lowering the age of punishment makes sense. “We want to enable him to mature personally,” he explained to the “Kurier”. However, in the boy’s case, child and youth services cannot “guarantee that there will be no more crimes.”