Up to 15 years in prison

Charges against head of department for child abuse

(Bild: stock.adobe.com)

The accusations made by the public prosecutor's office are serious and just reading them sends shivers down your spine. A 59-year-old head of department from the district of Braunau is alleged to have ordered live rapes of little girls on the internet. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.

The public prosecutor's office in Ried im Innkreis has charged him with the crimes of serious sexual abuse of minors (Section 206 (1) and (3) StGB) and pictorial sexual child abuse material and pictorial sexual depictions of minors (Section 207a StGB) as well as the offenses of pornographic depiction of minors (Section 207a StGB old version), moral endangerment of persons under the age of 16 (Section 208 StGB) and the initiation of sexual contact with minors (Section 208a StGB) against a 59-year-old man from Innviertel.

Procured via messenger service
After evaluating numerous confiscated data carriers, the accused, who at the time was the head of a municipality in the district of Braunau, is accused of having obtained pornographic images of minors via a messenger service on several occasions from at least 2019 until his arrest in January 2024 and making them available to other users of this service.

Live rapes on the internet
He also used live chats - sometimes via webcam and video telephony - to ask contact persons to perform sexual acts on very young girls in return for payment, as well as contacting underage young people directly, instructing them to perform sexual acts on themselves and asking them to send photos and videos.

Largely confessed
The accused has been in custody since the end of January 2024. He was arrested after the Upper Austrian State Criminal Police Office was made aware of the results of an investigation by US authorities. He has largely confessed in the preliminary proceedings and will have to answer to a lay assessor's court.

The range of punishment for the aforementioned offenses is five to 15 years imprisonment. A trial date has not yet been set by the Ried im Innkreis Regional Court.