Refugees gang rape 14-year-old daughter of a German refugee aid worker – The victim’s mother is appalled that they only get suspended sentences for it.

It is a horror that is unimaginable: several men assaulting a woman, brutalising her, humiliating her. The nightmare of gang rape!

According to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), a phenomenon that has increased more and more in recent years. In 2020 alone, 704 cases were reported; on average, two women or girls become victims of such an act every day. Every second suspect is not a German citizen, most of them come from Islamic countries.

Annika R. suffered this nightmare and met BILD reporter Mirko Voltmer for an interview. On BILD-Live she and her mother Monika R. talk about the crime, but want to remain anonymous. Annika was 14 years old when she was raped by two Syrians in the summer of 2016. The juvenile perpetrators got off with a suspended sentence. Even today, five years after the crime, both are suffering – and the mother says: “I want my daughter to live again.”

Particularly perfidious: Mother and daughter cared for refugees at the time, helped them to find their way, supported them.

During a cosy tea, the atmosphere suddenly turned: one of the men held Annika down, the other raped her.

The now 19-year-old says: “How am I…? It would be nice if I felt better again. But I often notice it in everyday life, there are many situations, it starts when travelling on the underground, or when someone comes too close to you at the checkout.” At school, she immediately took out her pepper spray as a reflex when a boy got too “close”.

“It’s little things. It can be a breath too close to the neck or a stupid saying and I already go crazy and have a panic attack.”

Her mother Monika R. tells of how she found out about the crime: “I heard it and it immediately went to my knees. I found myself on the floor again…”

“I have nightmares,” says Annika R. Sleeping for three hours is already a “highlight”: “I then have all the memories back in my head. All the feelings come up again, panic before sleeping. When you wake up, the panic is there because you dreamt it again. Yes, it’s quite hard.”

The therapists advised her not to go to trauma therapy until the court case was over.

Mother Monika R. reproaches herself for perhaps having fooled her children into believing that the world was too ideal. The refugee aid was a “family project”, “out of gratitude for life”: “The people were as close to us as adopted sons. There was no hint of thinking about something like that…”

A year later, Annika went to the police – on the advice of a good friend she had confided in.

The perpetrators were sentenced to a suspended sentence in February 2021. In the trial before the juvenile court – the defendants were adolescents at the time of the crime – the so far unpunished duo denied the crime.

Sentence: two years suspended juvenile sentence for Shadi A. (now 25). For his accomplice Mohamad T. (today 24) 18 months, plus a fine of 500 euros each. An appeal hearing on the case is planned, but there is no date yet.

“It has to be talked about,” says mother Monika R. “The penalties are simply far too low, the damage to people is too high…. I am lucky that my child is alive. But that it is alive is in inverted commas. It’s there, but I would like it to finally start living again.”

Normality, light-heartedness – hardly imaginable until now. “The mother told me that now – five years after the crime – they had laughed together for the first time in the car (on the way to the BILD visit, editor’s note),” reporter Mirko Voltmer reports. “From that you can see how big the shadow is that has fallen on both of them.” But the women felt the need to talk about it: “That things come out, that they are addressed – and that someone listens to them.”

Annika: “I wish they would lock them in a room and play them a video of me every day. How I felt. So that they understand how you feel about something like that.”