A Congolese refugee, previously described by the German press as a success story for integration, has been jailed for nine years after being convicted of beating and raping his own mother.
Moise Lohombo, 30, was sentenced by the Wiesbaden District Court for an offense the judge claimed was so cruel he told the court he thought he had misread the case file.
The migrant was found to have committed the crime in an apartment he shared with his mother shortly after being released from prison for a drug-related offense.
Upon the return home of his mother, he threatened her with a knife and told her he would kill her if she refused him sex. In a desperate plea, his mother offered him money for a prostitute instead, but he refused.
The victim was so severely beaten during the attack that investigators found blood spatter all over the apartment. After the rape, Lohombo reportedly apologized to his mother and called her an ambulance before fleeing.
His mother was transported to the hospital with serious injuries including bleeding on the brain. She was also heavily impacted psychologically by the attack and told nurses she was worried her son may have impregnated her.
Lohombo had become a poster boy in Germany for how migrants could successfully integrate into Western society and transform their lives.
Having arrived in Europe at the age of 8, the child migrant already had problems with aggression and would attack other children. With a long rap sheet in his youth, the Congolese national was portrayed as someone who had turned their life around, completing an apprenticeship as a baker before turning to professional boxing.
“If you sit across from Moise Lohombo over a latte, you see a charming, friendly young man who enthusiastically shows pictures of his bull terrier dog Betty on his cell phone,” read a puff piece on the man in Deutsche Handwerkszeitung back in 2017.
It described Lohombo’s life as one of “ups and downs” and praised how he had “literally fought his way through” from a life of crime to becoming a model citizen as he left his “youthful sins” behind.
The transformation failed to last, however, and Lohombo was incarcerated for drug offenses, being released on Aug. 25 last year, shortly before the rape of his mother.
During sentencing, the judge told the court he thought he had misread the case file upon reviewing the circumstances of the offense. “How can something like this happen?” he asked.
Lohombo’s only response throughout the trial was that he “did not know how this had happened.” In mitigation, his defense lawyer claimed his client had consumed psychogenic substances and alcohol and was not of sound mind during the attack.
The court, however, rejected calls to place him in a psychiatric institution instead of prison, jailing him for nine years.