Child molester

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The term “ child molester ” is a German term for people who, for example in a pedosexual background, are responsible for or are accused of sexual abuse of children .

The Austrian Criminal Code , which was valid from 1852 to 1974 , made child molestation a punishable offense in Section 128:

Anyone who has a boy or a girl under fourteen years of age, or a person in a state of defenselessness and unconsciousness, to satisfy his desires for someone other than those in §. 127 designated way abused sexually, commits the crime of desecration ... ... .

The word "desecration" was not used again in the Austrian reform of criminal law in 1974.

history

The German dictionary does not use the term "child molester", but the gender-specific forms " boy molester " , " girl molester " and " boy molester " ("boy schaender"), which are rarely used today . The distinction according to the sex of the victim is connected with an old distinction in the understanding of law that extends into the modern age: The "abuse of boys" was rated as an act that contradicts "nature", as sodomy , while in the case of "desecration of girls" rather the encroachment on the freedom and physical integrity of the victim were considered. But the term “child molestation” can already be traced back to the second half of the 19th century, used to distinguish it from the legal term “ fornication of children” at the time.

The political scientist Brigitte Kerchner sees the spread of the term "child molester" in the context of the spread of biological explanations for crimes towards the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, with attempts to explain dispositions to such crimes by an "inferiority of genetic makeup" of the corresponding persons . With the establishment of the term “child molestation” in criminology towards the end of the Weimar Republic , criminology opened up to the “defamatory tone of racial hygiene and reactionary child protectionists”. A "militant child protection movement" had used the term "child molester" "to stigmatize sex offenders as 'subhumans'". The image of perpetrators associated with the term “child molestation” also included women in the Weimar Republic. In some of the works of the time, the "'desecration of women' as an undiscovered but widespread fact" was presented.

During the time of National Socialism , “girl molester” was also used synonymously with “racial molester” for male Jews who were in amicable romantic relationships with women who were attributed to the “Aryan race” according to the prevailing doctrine . The striker, for example, repeatedly defamed such people in his articles using the designation "girl molester", as did the Franconian daily newspaper with the words "girl molester" and "girl desecration". According to the historian Alexandra Przyrembel , the word “girl molester” was “an instrument of social ostracism and marginalization of the Jewish population”. Male Jews were also defamed as "boy molesters" and "Aryan" boys.

The terms are used, among other things, in neo-Nazi circles as a catchphrase , often in connection with the demand for “harsh” penalties for such crimes, such as the death penalty and forced castration . They are also widely used in some mass media .

criticism

The word “child molestation” refers to the concept of shame , as a counter-concept to honor . The child victim of sexual violence is literally covered with shame, with which he has to live from now on, loses his honor. The use of the word can thus be understood as an assignment of guilt , even by the victim .

Ursula Enders , head of the Zartbitter Cologne association , and the Regenbogenwald association reject this form of designation due to this attribution of shame to the victim. According to Enders, neo-Nazis professionally disqualify themselves by using the word "child molester".

Maria Pober, representative of feminist linguistics , suggests as an alternative the - also gendered - words "girl, woman, boy / boy or male rapist", which let the perpetrator become explicit.

The term is also seen as an attempt to do justice to the severity of the sexual abuse for the victims. Dorothea Dieckmann wrote in 1996 on the word “child molester”: “'Defilement' corresponds - as a derivation of 'shame' - to the traditional moral concept of honor; It connotes something sacred, naturally inviolable (as in the case of desecration of graves, for example). Even the sound has something archaic and concrete that makes the term 'catchy': suitable for expressing the truly archaic horror of such acts. Its desolate, uncivilized simplicity predestines the word child molester to be a conveyor belt for popular hatred, prejudice and the repression of one's own guilt. Yet it is not a kind of Nazi battle term; one even has to admit that it is semantically appropriate to the fact. "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Boy molester, m. In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 11 : K - (V). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1873 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).
  2. ↑ Brigitte Kerchner: body politics . The construction of the "child molester" in the interwar period. In: Wolfgang Hardtwig (Ed.): Political cultural history of the interwar period 1918–1939 . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-525-36421-0 , p. 249 ( books.google.de ).
  3. ↑ Fischel: quarterly for practical medicine . Ed .: Josef Halla, Josef Kraft. tape 75 . Publisher by Karl André, Prague 1862, chap. 2 , p. 110 ( books.google.de ).
  4. ↑ a b c d Kerchner, 249.
  5. ↑ Kerchner, p. 252.
  6. ↑ a b c Alexandra Przyrembel: "Rassenschande". Purity myth and legitimation for extermination under National Socialism . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-525-35188-7 , pp. 81 ( books.google.de ).
  7. ↑ a b Comité des Délégations Juives (ed.): The situation of the Jews in Germany. The Black Book - Facts and Documents . Ullstein, Frankfurt a. M. 1983, ISBN 3-550-07960-5 , pp. 465 f .
  8. ^ Günter Grau : Lexicon on the persecution of homosexuals 1933–1945. Institutions - people - fields of activity . Lit Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-8258-9785-7 , pp. 73 ( books.google.de ).
  9. ↑ a b c Dirk Kutting: Abused School !? Ground the institution anew . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-525-70111-9 , pp. 98 ( books.google.de ).
  10. ↑ a b c Patrick Gensing: Demanding the death penalty does not benefit the victims. (No longer available online.) Publikative.org , October 18, 2011, archived from the original on May 13, 2013 ; Retrieved March 7, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.publikative.org
  11. ↑ Ingrid Olbricht : Ways out of fear - violence against women . Causes, consequences, therapy. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-51759-5 , p. 95 ( books.google.de ).
  12. ↑ Michael Welslau: Why there shouldn't be child molesters and death sentences. Rainbow Forest, July 6, 2012, accessed April 9, 2013 .
  13. ↑ Maria Pober: gender symmetry . Considerations on the gender-symmetrical structure of a gender dictionary in German. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8260-3445-9 , p. 173 ( books.google.de ).
  14. ↑ Dorothea Dieckmann : Handy term, liberal voice . In: The daily newspaper . September 25, 1996.