Crimes on prison leave?: Abuse in the children's room - "I'm ashamed"

A young sex offender has been in prison in Lower Saxony for almost four years for multiple child abuse. In preparation for his permanent release, the 23-year-old will be released on prison leave at the beginning of 2025 and will move to Bavaria. He regularly speaks to experts at a specialist outpatient clinic for sex offenders - and yet he continues to commit a crime again.

The 23-year-old assaulted two boys, as he confessed to the Aschaffenburg regional court. “The fantasies were there, and the imprisonment didn’t change that. (...) I'm ashamed of it." The suspect says there were no instructions stating that he was not allowed to have contact with children during his prison leave. Such a requirement from the youth center in Hamelin, Lower Saxony only affected its previous victims.

According to his own words, the defendant contacted his new victims, then eleven and twelve years old, via social media in 2025. He felt lonely in his new life in Franconia and was looking for attention, as he told the criminal court. He meets a family from the Aschaffenburg area who has three boys. They will meet regularly in spring 2025.

At some point, the sex offender, who was legally convicted in 2021, relapsed and assaulted the family's then twelve-year-old child several times, including in the children's room. “I also asked him not to say anything,” said the defendant at the start of the trial.

When contact with the family breaks off after arguments, the man finds his next victim in an eleven-year-old in Saxony-Anhalt. The defendant tells candidly how they met in Staßfurt. “He wanted to do me a favor because we got along well.” There will be no further meeting because investigators will arrest the 23-year-old in Franconia at the end of July 2025.

The public prosecutor's office accuses the German of, among other things, multiple serious sexual abuse, production and possession of child pornography, rape and bodily harm.

"The public prosecutor's office will request that the defendant be placed in preventive detention during the main hearing," says public prosecutor Sebastian Geis, making it clear how dangerous the investigators consider the defendant to be. Preventive detention can be ordered after serving prison time if the perpetrator continues to pose a significant danger to the public.

The defendant is a repeat offender. He was imprisoned in Hameln until the beginning of 2025. According to the Hanover Regional Court, he was 17 years old when he was proven to have committed his first attacks, and the four abused boys were between 10 and 12. "The convicted man made an extensive confession, which spared the injured children from having to testify in court," said a court spokeswoman in Hanover a few days before the trial in Aschaffenburg.

His time in the youth prison after the 2021 verdict and the conversations with therapists are obviously not fruitful. According to the defendant, he will not receive any therapy at all during his first year in prison. He was later assigned a therapist who was not familiar with sex offenders - allegedly due to a lack of staff. Group discussions and a few individual meetings with what he saw as an experienced therapist only scratched the surface and achieved little.

When he told several people familiar with his case while on prison leave in Franconia - including from the Hameln youth center and the specialist outpatient clinic for sex offenders - that he was meeting a family with three children, this had no consequences, says the defendant.

“Obviously all of the specialists were fooled and manipulated,” said an investigator in court.

After the defendant's alleged new attacks became known, Lower Saxony's Justice Minister Kathrin Wahlmann (SPD) spoke of a "failure" because no psychological opinion was obtained before the man was released from prison. This only happened before previously granted relaxations in detention.

The ministry spoke of a “prediction error” at the Hameln youth center. The prisoner behaved differently while on vacation to prepare for release than was predicted in Hamelin. This misjudgment has now been dealt with in the institution. What exactly that means was not stated.

The proceedings in Aschaffenburg take place before the 2nd Youth Chamber as a youth protection court. It is basically public. However, there is still the possibility that the public will be excluded from the interrogation of the victims. The court has scheduled four days of trial until October 21st.

In his comprehensive statement to the court on the first day of the trial, the defendant asserted that he wanted to undergo therapy. “I really have to actively tackle this problem with a new therapy, and if necessary, medication. I don’t want to commit any more criminal matters.”