Pascal process

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Pascal trial was a criminal trial before the Saarbrücken regional court to investigate the alleged murder of a boy named Pascal, who disappeared without a trace in autumn 2001. The almost three-year trial, which is considered to be one of the most spectacular and lengthy trials in Saarland's judicial history, ended before the 1st criminal chamber in September 2007 after 147 days of hearing and 294 witnesses, with acquittals for all twelve accused .

The indictment had accused the four women and eight men of being involved in the rape and killing of the then five-year-old boy in the back room of a pub. A co-defendant, whose trial had previously been severed, was sentenced to seven years in prison after two days of trial. The main defendant, the landlady of the pub, received a one-year prison sentence for drug offenses, which was suspended.

On 13 January 2009, rejected Federal Court the revision of the prosecutor, so the acquittals are final . There is still no trace of the alleged victim.

Investigations

On September 30, 2001, the then five-year-old Pascal disappeared in the Saarbrücken district of Burbach . Thereupon the Soko “hut” was set up, but despite hundreds of testimonies it could not find the boy. The suspicion was initially directed against the 18-year-old stepsister after her younger sister testified that the older sister had killed Pascal with a shovel after an argument and confessed to the crime. However, the girl retracted this statement; Even before the actual Pascal trial began, the then fifteen-year-old sued the investigating officials. They had forced them to use physical force to retract this statement, instead reporting the second version of a man who took Pascal with him in the car the day he disappeared. The assault and extortion proceedings were discontinued because the suspected officers testified that the girl had merely had an accidental accident, while the witness protested, including her older sister, who she had accused of murdering Pascal, about the version The man in the car was pushed. During the actual Pascal trial, when it was only about her first statement, according to which her older sister should have killed Pascal, she revoked this statement again and referred to the urge of the accused older sister not to accuse her any further.

Independently of this, the youth welfare office of the then Saarbrücken city association had been investigating a case of possible child welfare endangerment in the Burbach milieu for some time . It concerned a six-year-old boy, called "Kevin" (also: "Andreas", "Andi", "Tobias", "Bernie") by the police and the media. Said "Kevin" (born January 8, 1995 ) was the biological son and fifth child of "Andrea M.", his father unknown, all siblings given up for adoption after birth . The mother, described as debilitating , was known as an occasional prostitute in the vicinity of the Burbach "Tosa-Klause", a small bar with street sales opened in 1999 , directly on the busy Hochstrasse number 76 , opposite the Saarland State Office for Social Affairs . The helpless woman was under the care of the innkeeper "Christa W." and lived together with "Kevin" in their house in the Saarbrücken suburb of Riegelsberg . Soon the police, the neighborhood and the kindergarten began to show that the boy was not doing well there. Since the allegations could be dispelled again and again, nothing happened for years. It was not until January 2001 that the child was taken into care , based on strong signs of abuse, neglect and abnormal behavior of the child, but not because of suspicion of abuse. Subsequently, "Kevin" was given to another (second) foster family.

Even after a year of intense investigative work, there was no trace of the missing Pascal. At the same time, having arrived in a (third) foster family, "Kevin" reported from autumn 2002 first about the abuse he had suffered and soon that he and also Pascal, whom he wanted to have known well , had been sexually abused by a group of adults . The foster mother, startled by the child's stories, subsequently sent the minutes of the conversations, some of them handwritten, and some of them recorded on tape, to the authorities. It also provided a promising approach to investigating the Pascal case, which had been idle for months. According to the description of the now eight-year-old "Kevin", this group regularly consists of children of assaulting adults from the landlady of the Tosa-Klause "Christa W." and several regular guests of the restaurant. The police investigations of the newly established Soko "Riegel" (based on the landlady's place of residence) now turned against this group of people known as the "Tosa Community"; in February 2003 arrest warrants were issued against the landlady and about two dozen regular guests.

Several suspects made incriminating statements to the police. The birth mother of "Kevin", witness and ultimately also the accused "Andrea M." stated that Pascal was lured into the bar, raped several times and then suffocated with a pillow. The body was buried in a garbage bag in a sand pit in Schœneck , France . As a result, the pit was searched for weeks in April 2003 by a 70-strong police force. However, a body could not be found.

The police are accused of misconduct: they had known about child abuse in the "Tosa-Klause" for a long time through an informant without intervening. Through information from the neighborhood and kindergarten, the youth welfare office would have known of grievances years before the "Kevin" was taken into care, without ever taking effective action. Tapes on which "Kevin's" foster mother had recorded conversations with him disappeared on the way from the youth welfare office to the court.

process

One of the accused, named by the media as "Peter Sch." And described as mentally retarded, confessed to having abused "Kevin" and Pascal. He had molested the children in a back room of the pub and paid the landlady 20 marks for each. After the proceedings against him had been severed from the public prosecutor's office , the Saarbrücken regional court sentenced him to seven years ' imprisonment in October 2003 after two days of trial . This first trial was criticized in the media as a fast-track trial in which the defendant was only defended by a labor lawyer.

The trial of a further twelve defendants - four women and eight men - began on September 20, 2004. At the beginning, a verdict was expected by the end of the year. The indictment was based mainly on the testimony of "Andrea M.", which she initially repeated in court, but later revoked. Other defendants also incriminated each other and later revoked their statements. There was no other evidence : neither Pascal's body nor the bicycle he was riding on the day of his disappearance was found. Also, no hair, traces of blood or sperm could be found on the mattress in the Tosa hermitage, on which the boy was said to have been raped.

As the process progressed, the negotiation continued to stall. There was also criticism of the investigative authorities: the accused, some of whom were described as mentally poorly gifted and alcoholic , would have been put under psychological and physical pressure for their statements. Furthermore, a psychological report raised doubts about the credibility of "Kevin's" statements.

By June 2006, the court released all of the accused from pre-trial detention , as it no longer saw any urgent suspicion against them, but only an adequate suspicion. The proceedings against another defendant were dropped because they were unable to stand trial.

On 23 August 2007, called for Attorney General in his plea for eleven of the defendants' imprisonment, of which five cases a life sentence ; one of the accused was to be acquitted. The defenders demanded acquittals. The defendants had the last word on August 31, 2007 and reaffirmed their innocence. After 147 days of trial and 294 witnesses, all twelve defendants were acquitted on September 7, 2007. Unresolved doubts about the guilt of the accused made this decision inevitable, according to the testimony of the presiding judge Ulrich Chudoba. The landlady of the Tosa Klause was sentenced to one year probation for a drug offense.

The judgment met with broad criticism in public. The chairman of the SPD parliamentary group Heiko Maas said: “I think the acquittals suck. It is unbelievable that in one of the most complex trials in German judicial history it was not possible to prove the accusation of murder and abuse of a small child. Today, many have lost faith in the rule of law. ” Deutsche Kinderhilfe spoke of a“ black day for child victims in German criminal proceedings ”.

The mirror -Reporterin Gisela Friedrichsen compared the case due to massive prejudged by numerous media, obvious statement suggestion and -nötigung by police, conflicting and mutually incriminating testimony, repeated statement revocations and clearer hinzielender the statement result Abuse survey suggestion with the Montessori process (1992 –1995) and the Worms Trials (1994–1997).

Revision

Against the acquittals of four defendants, including against the acquittal part of the landlady of the "Tosa-Klause", the prosecution presented Saarbrücken revision in the Federal Court , a Supreme Court (BGH). However, with a judgment of January 13, 2009, the 4th Criminal Senate of the Federal Court of Justice confirmed the judgment of the Saarbrücken Regional Court. In the opinion of the BGH, the acquittals are not objectionable. Errors in the assessment of evidence were not found. The judgment is carefully and thoroughly justified. In particular, the regional court did not make any excessive demands on the formation of convictions necessary for a conviction. Rather, it always kept in mind that five of the defendants whose personality structure was conspicuous had at times given confessed, but later revoked, statements during interrogations in the preliminary proceedings, explorations by experts and sometimes also during the main hearing - at least in part.

Events during and after the completion of the process

Pascal's biological parents who were involved in the process as co-plaintiffs died before the end of the trial. His mother "Sonja Z." succumbed to a brain hemorrhage on June 14, 2005 at the age of 46 . His father "Heinz C." suffered a heart attack a good two weeks later on July 2, 2005, at the age of 50 . He then took part in a bar fight, in the run-up to which he was insulted by a 39-year-old. According to the autopsy, however, it was not the brawl, but the previous heart attack that was the immediate cause of his death, so that the police did not investigate the drunken participants.

The accused "Günter L." suffered on 23 September 2005 in custody a stroke and was subsequently for adherent and unfit to stand trial stated that he died before the verdict. His co-defendant "Jupp W." collapsed in the meeting room on the 72nd day of the trial as a result of a hunger strike that had been going on for four days . The court adjourned for three weeks when the accused "Martin R.", who is alleged to have been the last person to abuse Pascal, attempted suicide on November 11, 2004 while in custody. After his release on June 12, 2006, the criminal convicted of violent crimes was arrested again on January 10, 2007 for trespassing, assault and theft. After acquittal of the abuse allegations and release from prison in September 2007, he stabbed a neighbor with a kitchen knife on May 29, 2009. Since he was heavily drunk at the time of the crime, he was granted a reduced guilty capacity and in December 2009 he received a six-year prison sentence for manslaughter , which he served in the Saarbrücken correctional facility until July 2015 . In April 2016, a court took the now 53-year-old "Martin R." back into custody because of the risk of repetition against the background of renewed allegations of violence, threats, coercion, bodily harm and sexual harassment of an 88-year-old neighbor. On November 14, 2016, he was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison. The court found that he was guilty of dangerous physical harm, threats and insults. However, the board found no evidence for the allegation of the sexual offense. His defense lawyer Walter Teusch commented on this allegation with the words "Obviously she [the public prosecutor] could not cope with the fact that he was acquitted in the Pascal trial" and announced his appeal.

The French judiciary was also involved in the process, and after the Saarbrücken acquittals continued to investigate a French citizen who allegedly participated in acts of abuse in the Forbach apartment of one of the main defendants near the border in France . Before the investigation was over, he died of natural causes in March 2010.

The delivery of the book published by Friedrichsen in September 2008 " When in doubt against the accused: The Pascal case " was stopped by an injunction of the Hamburg Regional Court on January 13, 2009. The publisher Random House appealed. On October 9, 2009, the injunction was revoked (judgment 324 O 943/09 Hamburg district court). In June 2010, the Berlin Court of Appeal decided against Friedrichsen by the 15-year-old "Kevin", represented by his foster mother. The court saw the assertion made in the book that the trial had been initiated by " allegations of the foster mother " as inadmissible and condemned the publisher to stop further distribution of the book and to destroy the remaining copies.

In May 2011 it became known that an indication that the body was initially buried in the Lorraine gravel pit, but then dug up again and buried at another location in Luxembourg, was not pursued by the judiciary. This reference with the number 677 is based on a confession that the co-defendant "Andrea M." is said to have made to a fellow prisoner during her imprisonment.

Sixteen years after Pascal's disappearance , the second child abuse victim, known from the media under the pseudonym “Kevin”, went public for the first time. Today's grown man is present in the media under his real name. Bernhard Müller himself says: “I don't want to hide behind the victim's facade anymore. People should see who I am and what my name is ”.

Artistic reception

The playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz leaned against the Pascal case in 2004 for his play Du hast wigelt. Requiem for a dear child , which premiered in 2012 at the Cuvilliés Theater in Munich. The allegations of the public prosecutor's office, which could not be proven in court, are assumed to be facts.

In 2012 the Siegburg sculptor Bruno Harich created the “ Memorial Stone Against Forgetting ”. The central element of the work is the “ Letter to Pascal ” carved into African quartzite with the help of “Kevin ”. According to media reports, the Saarbrücken city administration refused to display it on the scene in the Burbach district. After years of changing locations in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate , the stele found a permanent place in Schwalbach in Saarland in 2017 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ sr-online.de ( Memento from September 17, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  2. ^ In case of doubt against the accused - The story of the Tosa-Klause by Patrick Bahners for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on December 5, 2008, accessed on April 20, 2012.
  3. ^ Saarbrücken Regional Court, decision of September 7, 2007, file number 1-12 / 04 SchwG
  4. ↑ Federal Court of Justice, judgment of the 4th Criminal Senate of January 13, 2009, file number 4 StR 301/08 ( online version )
  5. ↑ Michael Mielke: Rubble of an Indictment , Spiegel Online , February 23, 2005
  6. ↑ 42nd day of the trial: What happened on the Sunday of the fair? ( Memento of May 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), SR-Online, May 30, 2005
  7. ↑ Gisela Friedrichsen: "You were that!" In: SPIEGEL Online from November 15, 2004 (last accessed on March 20, 2018)
  8. ↑ Focus : "FALL PASCAL - Used to bad things" No. 11/2003 (last accessed on March 20, 2018)
  9. ↑ Uwe Krüger : “From Suggestion and Subjectivity” in: MESSAGE - International Newspaper for Journalism 2/2009; (last accessed on March 20, 2018)
  10. ↑ Michael Jungmann: "Victims of brutal child molesters" in: Trierischer Volksfreund from February 23, 2003; (last accessed on March 20, 2018)
  11. ↑ waz.de: The day when Pascal disappeared on September 30, 2011 (last accessed on January 21, 2016)
  12. ↑ Kölner Stadtanzeiger: Police stop searching for Pascal's body from April 22, 2003 (last accessed on January 25, 2016)
  13. ↑ Welt online: Little Pascal and Hell in the Tosa Klause. September 29, 2011
  14. ↑ Spiegel Online: Ein Notleidender Prozess , July 21, 2006
  15. ↑ From Monday: Pascal process. In: Saarbrücker Zeitung from September 18, 2004
  16. ↑ faz.net: Chief witness revokes all statements , August 31, 2006
  17. ↑ tagesspiegel.de: In Doubt , September 8, 2007
  18. ↑ faz.net: At the end of the fog of doubt ( memento from January 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), September 6, 2007
  19. ↑ a b Spiegel Online: Prosecution demands five life sentences , 23 August 2007
  20. ↑ welt.de: Public prosecutor demands life imprisonment , September 6, 2007
  21. ↑ https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/panorama/fall-pascal-die-angeklAGEN-sind-frei-der-schreckliche-verdacht-bleibt/1036196.html
  22. ↑ Daniel Müller: The Scapegoat , Die Zeit, November 26, 2015
  23. ↑ Welt Online: Judgment in the Pascal Trial meets with criticism , September 7, 2007
  24. ↑ Gisela Friedrichsen: Can be, can't be . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 2007 ( online - 10 September 2007 ).
  25. ↑ BGH, press release No. 6/09 of January 13, 2009
  26. ↑ https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/ Judgment-im-pascal-process-kinderschaender-muss-in-psychiatrie- 1.680906
  27. ↑ tagesspiegel.de: Pascal's mother died , in: Tagesspiegel , June 15, 2005 (last accessed on January 9, 2014)
  28. ↑ faz.net: Father of the missing Pascal dies in a fight , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , July 2, 2005 (last accessed on January 9, 2014)
  29. ↑ spiegel.de: That's not how it works from December 23, 2005 (last accessed on January 25, 2016)
  30. ↑ spiegel.de: The indictment begins to crumble from October 10, 2005 (last accessed on January 21, 2016)
  31. ↑ RP Online: Defendant accuses police of coercion from December 2, 2004 (last accessed on January 21, 2016)
  32. ↑ RP Online: In Prison: Defendant Attempts Suicide November 11, 2004 (last accessed January 21, 2016)
  33. ↑ spiegel.de: Chronology: The Pascal case from September 7, 2007 (last accessed on January 21, 2016)
  34. ↑ sol.de: Pascal defendant convicted of manslaughter Mein Saarland Online on December 16, 2009 (last accessed on January 21, 2016)
  35. ↑ Ex-defendant of the Pascal trial back in custody SOL.de - Saarland Online from April 8, 2016 (last accessed on April 8, 2016)
  36. ↑ Martin R. has to go to prison for almost 3 years BILD from November 14, 2016 (last accessed on September 17, 2017)
  37. ↑ sol.de: In the Pascal trial because of abuse charged French dead Mein Saarland Online from March 12, 2010 (last accessed on January 21, 2016)
  38. ↑ 324 O 943/08 - October 9, 2009 - Lawyer Nesselhauf could not forbid the book on buskeismus-lexikon.de
  39. ↑ EMMA : Gisela Friedrichsen sentenced July 1, 2010 (last accessed on March 13, 2018)
  40. ↑ Pascal case: trace 677 not pursued enough by court. My Saarland Online from May 16, 2011
  41. ↑ bernhard-mueller-saar.de - the site of Bernhard Müller. Retrieved October 28, 2018 (German).
  42. ↑ He was also abused in the Tosa-Klause - Pascal's best friend breaks his silence . In: bild.de . ( bild.de [accessed on October 28, 2018]).
  43. ^ Egbert Tholl: Kroetz premiere at the Cuvilliés. Pornography of horror. Süddeutsche.de, March 18, 2012
  44. ↑ Sandra Kegel: Perpetrators in the theater, how sexual ghost drivers tick. faz.net, March 18, 2012
  45. ↑ Project page on the creation and career of the memorial stone (last accessed on March 13, 2018)
  46. ↑ A stone memorial for little Pascal in: Saarbrücker Zeitung from June 20, 2017 (last accessed on March 13, 2018)
  47. ↑ Memorial stone for Pascal erected in Schwalbach after 15 years Breaking News Saarland on June 24, 2017 (last accessed on March 13, 2018)

Web links