In July 2022, a 30-year-old man raped a girl that was unknown to him in a courtyard in the city of Osnabrück. The district court has now sentenced the Syrian refugee to the highest possible suspended sentence.
Two years in prison is the longest sentence that can still be suspended in Germany. Just one more day and the offender will have to serve his sentence behind bars. The 30-year-old Osnabrück man who now had to answer to the district court was lucky – if he does not reoffend in a similar way, he can spend the next years in freedom.
At first glance at the crime, this may seem disturbing, because the juvenile court confirmed the charge according to which the 30-year-old raped a 15-year-old girl who was a complete stranger to him. The crime occurred in the early morning of July 10, 2022, a Sunday. The 15-year-old girl wanted to go to her boyfriend who lives in Möserstraße, the accused came from a disco and actually wanted to go home.
“He did not already run after her from Neumarkt, as the indictment says, but only encountered and approached her in Möserstraße,” said defence lawyer Frank Otten, who made a statement on behalf of his client. The 30-year-old apparently asked the teenager for a cigarette, they had stood together, smoked and talked. “At least as far as his language skills allowed.”
Exactly why the accused, who had never attracted attention for a sexual assault, then raped the teenager remained open. “Possibly he was stimulated by the alcohol, he probably thought, ‘I can still convince her’,” Otten said. “It was the first time I had drunk alcohol,” his client added.
In fact, the accused would not have had to stand trial for consensual sexual acts with a 15-year-old girl, which German criminal law allows in principle. But there was no question of consensuality in this case: Against her will, the accused pushed his victim against the wall “and did not stop fiddling with her when she fled into a stairwell”, said presiding judge Michael Hune in his reasoning for the sentence. Finally, the rape took place with the use of violence. A DNA analysis led to the perpetrator’s conviction.
Finally, the 30-year-old was also convicted of supplying narcotics to minors. At some point during the encounter, he had handed over a bag containing half a gram of cannabis to the 15-year-old girl.
“I am not allowed to say anything about the content of the deliberations, but we had a hard time,” said presiding judge Michael Hune in his explanation of the verdict. If only for the sake of general prevention, he said, the court had to take tough action when a 15-year-old girl was raped in broad daylight in the middle of Osnabrück. “I think we all want to live in a city where you don’t have to fear something like that.”
In the accused’s favour, however, was the fact that he had been disinhibited due to alcohol and had no previous convictions of note. From a purely legal point of view, the intensity of the rape was also “on the lower edge”. To explain: while most people think of rape as sexual intercourse carried out with the use of force, criminal law provides that some other sexual acts are also legally considered rape if they are carried out against the will of the person concerned.
Finally, Hune emphasised that the 30-year-old, who had fled to Germany from Syria in 2015, had a flat and would soon have a job. “You are well on the way to becoming a normal citizen here.
All this prevented the defendant from having to serve a prison sentence. However, the court imposed some conditions on him for the three-year probationary period: From now on, he is not allowed to come closer than 50 metres to his victim and has to leave immediately if he sees the girl anywhere. In addition, the Syrian has to pay compensation for pain and suffering in the amount of 3,000 euros. According to the chairman, Michael Hune, this means that the 15-year-old has more from the suspended sentence than she would have from his stay in prison. “This way you can at least work and pay her the pain and suffering money, which she would otherwise certainly never get.”
