kidnapping

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A kidnapping is a criminal act in which one or more people are dragged or detained under criminal coercion to an involuntary place of residence. Ransom money is often demanded from the kidnappers for their release . If the kidnapping victim is a child, one speaks of child abduction . The English equivalent of kidnapping originally refers to this special case, but has been given a generalized extension of meaning . The kidnapped persons group is in an airplane, it is called hijacking .

Offense

Legal delimitation

In the German criminal jurisprudence are under the umbrella term kidnapping offenses the offenses trafficking , kidnapping , kidnapping for extortion , hostage-taking , abduction of minors and abduction as special cases of the general offense of false imprisonment summarized.

The earlier offense of kidnapping with and against the will of the abductee , in which the will of the male perpetrator had to be directed towards extramarital sexual acts on the abducted woman, has been repealed in the course of the reform of the offenses against sexual self-determination . The kidnapping against the will of the kidnapped person can now be punished as (attempted) sexual coercion or rape .

(For information on the "robbery of women", which was widespread in historical times, see bride robbery ; for information on "robbery of women" as an obstacle to marriage under canon law, see Raptio .)

Criminological demarcation

The criminological demarcation between kidnapping, hostage-taking and kidnapping is not always uniform and clear. In any case, kidnapping is used when the victim is taken to a hiding place or to a place of residence known only to the perpetrators. The main goal of kidnapping is to extort a ransom . Other goals can be to enforce political demands or the release of prisoners. There are also combinations of these and similar purposes. The hallmark of hostage-taking, on the other hand, would be that the hostage-takers hold the victim at a known location and use them, for example, to blackmail the criminals to move freely or to cover the escape route. A characteristic can also be that the people taken hostage are more or less accidentally victims of deprivation of liberty (e.g. because they are at the scene of a bank robbery ), while kidnapping victims were specifically selected by the perpetrators before the crime. These delimitations are no longer applicable to aircraft or ship hijackings. A kidnapping is often referred to when the kidnapping is carried out for the purpose of making use of the abilities and characteristics of the kidnapped, i.e. the kidnapping victims, for example, are to be abused as forced laborers or sex slaves and deprived of their freedom in the long term.

Consequences of sacrifice

Beyond the pure deprivation of liberty, victims of kidnapping are usually in danger of being injured or killed, and their life and limb are threatened accordingly. The psychological consequences of this traumatic experience can also be serious. A prolonged kidnapping or hostage-taking can lead to the victim and the perpetrator becoming emotionally closer due to the mutual predicament. This effect is known as Stockholm Syndrome because it was first described in connection with a hostage-taking in a bank in Stockholm.

Books, films, theater

See also

Wiktionary: Abduction  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Kidnapping  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence