Katrin Schneider hardly ever leaves her home. For months she has been suffering from a nightmare from which there seems to be no awakening. After a rape, she encounters her tormentor almost every day because he lives in the house across the street. The perpetrator has already been convicted, but is pulling out all the stops to stay out of prison.”He deliberately gets out of the car when I pass by, still makes me feel like I deserve what he did to me and my family, and there’s no sign of remorse at all,” Schneider says in the interview with station RTL. On a Saturday in September 2019, her life changes abruptly. She is on her way home after a company party at a care facility. Her work colleague Mohammed B. accompanies her. Schneider seems safer walking with someone. But the man from whom she hopes for protection suddenly falls upon her. He rapes her behind a supermarket. Out of fear of him, she does not cry out for help, she says.Katrin Schneider calls the police. Her neighbour is arrested in his flat the same night. More than a year after the crime, the Bonn Regional Court sentences him in October 2020 to three years and ten months in prison for particularly serious rape. But Mohammed B. is still at large today – his defence lawyer has lodged an appeal. It is to be examined whether the trial was formally in order. This should hardly change the verdict, but the appeal could make it take more than a year before it becomes final.For Kathrin Schneider, this is an unbearable situation. “Everything collapses for you and I have to watch him go on with his life,” she says. Moreover, her children attend the same kindergarten group as the perpetrator’s children.When asked why Mohammed B. does not move away, his lawyer answers: “The accused has made sustained efforts to move away from there, both on his own initiative and with the help of social organisations. However, this has had no success at all.” B. has lost his job because of the sentence and it is difficult to find another job. In response to an enquiry from RTL, the municipality of Hennef stated that it had found the man a suitable flat, but that he had not accepted it. He is not legally obliged to do so. A move is also out of the question for Katrin Schneider and her family. They live in their own house and do not want to be driven away by the terrible experience.
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Antisemitism, Antizionism, Jihadism and the Reunited Germany. News by Fred Alan Medforth