Worms processes

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The Worms Trials are three criminal trials before the Mainz Regional Court that lasted from 1994 to 1997 , in which 25 people from Worms and the surrounding area were accused of mass child abuse as part of a porn ring and which ended with the acquittal of all accused. The statements of the alleged victims were classified as falsification of memory and confabulation , caused by grossly incorrect questioning methods.

They are considered to be the largest abuse trials in German legal history. Both the lay evidence in the run-up to the trial as well as the devastating fate of the wrongly accused, their families and the children seriously harmed by the decisions of the youth welfare office received strong media coverage and led to a turning point in the legal assessment of the credibility of witness statements.

Some of the children who had been taken with the intention to protect them from their families, were then in the judicial winding -home care in the orphanage Spatzennest in Ramsen in the Pfalz actually sexually abused.

trigger

The trigger for the proceedings was a divorce proceeding in which a woman accused her ex-husband of sexual abuse of their children, and which turned into hostility between the families. At the time, the two children lived with their grandmother, who turned to the Worms Youth Welfare Office and from this to the Wildwasser Worms e. V. was referred. A whitewater employee questioned the children using techniques that go back to the Münster psychiatry professor Tilman Fürniss (anatomically correct dolls, fairy tales, interrogation-like questioning of children, questions with implicit answers, etc.) and was convinced that she had found evidence of massive child abuse . The results were confirmed by a pediatrician that Whitewater sent the children to. As a result, 25 people were arrested on suspicion of sexual abuse of a total of 16 own or strangers' children. Some of their children were then placed in the Spatzennest children's home in Ramsen, Palatinate.

The process met with tremendous media coverage. In public opinion, the defendants were already prejudiced. The news magazine Der Spiegel initially reported: "Most of the medical findings and the largely consistent statements made by the children leave little room for doubt about many of the allegations."

Main proceedings and acquittal

Three main proceedings were opened, also referred to as Worms I , II and III . In Worms I seven people from the relatives of the divorced woman were indicted, in Worms II thirteen from the family of her former husband, including the grandmother with whom the two children lived. Worms III affected five people who did not belong to either family. The presiding judge in Worms I was initially Ernst Härtter and, after his illness in 1994, the future Mayor of Mainz, Jens Beutel . Judge Hans E. Lorenz was responsible for Worms II and Worms III .

In the course of the 131 days of the trial, a public prosecutor summarized the accusations of the defense indignantly and in disbelief: "The defense means: blind feminists act on unsuspecting children until they report abuse, and unscrupulous public prosecutors take over ..."

The Wormser Wildwasser-Verein made allegations that did not stand up to scrutiny or were contradicting: children were not yet born at the alleged time of the offense, in other cases the parents were already in custody at the alleged time of the offense.

Five days after admission to the Spatzennest children's home, two doctors made findings on a girl who was gynecologically normal until she was removed from the family (out-of-home placement ) that "with a high degree of certainty - which basically excludes a reasonable doubt - that a vaginal and anal-penetrating sexual abuse ”. The Mainz coroner Professor Reinhard Urban confirmed that the findings were fresh, and in the judgment of Worms II , the findings were assigned to the period of out-of-home placement .

Psychological credibility reports by Max Steller , among others, showed that the many, partly contradicting statements made by the children were generated by suggestion and were not based on experiences. In addition, the police could not find any evidence of sexual abuse or the like in unannounced house searches. Thus, the entire evidence was based on the statements of the likely manipulated children and the opinion of a pediatrician, who did not consider possible natural causes for various injuries to the children. Although there were many indications of the defendants' innocence, they were called for up to thirteen years in prison.

The three trials ended in 1996 and 1997 with acquittals in all 25 cases. The presiding judge Hans E. Lorenz began his oral judgment with the sentence “There never was mass abuse in Worms” and declared: “We have to apologize to all the accused, for whom a long path of suffering is coming to an end.”

Legal consequences

After the acquittals, Wildwasser separated from the active employee. The Berliner Zeitung reported at the end of June 1997 that it was still convinced that its approach was correct. There was no public apology or other consequences.

The federal court placed in 1999 - especially under the influence of these processes - Minimum requirements for criminal proceedings credibility report observes.

Consequences for those affected

The trials had a devastating effect on the children and the accused: one of the accused, the seventy-year-old grandmother, died in custody, while others were imprisoned for up to 21 months. Several marriages broke up and the existence of some of the defendants and families was completely destroyed by the high legal fees. Most of the children grew up in homes and only gradually returned to their parents. A boy with diabetes died a few days after he was released from the home.

Six children - those who were staying at the Spatzennest Children's Home, including those from the divorce dispute that sparked the proceedings - never returned because they were completely estranged from their parents . The home manager was accused at the time of deliberately inciting the children against their parents. Most of these children believe to this day (as of 2005) that their parents sexually abused them.

The sparrow's nest existed until it was dissolved in November 2007. At that time, the director of the home, who was the main witness in the Worms trials at the time , had been dismissed by his employer on suspicion of sexual abuse of wards. On February 8, 2008, the ex-home manager was taken into custody for this reason; on August 22, 2008, he was found guilty of sexual abuse of children in the offense with sexual abuse of wards in two cases and one year suspended prison sentence and a three-year professional ban sentenced. In April 2011, this former home director was charged again with more serious allegations of abuse and in November 2011 he was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison for serious sexual abuse.

See also

literature

Documentation

  • Jutta Pinzler, Dorothea Hohengarten: Suspected child abuse: The Worms judicial scandal , NDR 2008

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gisela Friedrichsen: Criminal Justice: “The matter is not over” . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9/2005 , February 28, 2005 ( spiegel.de [accessed April 3, 2019]).
  2. ↑ The case breaks the boundaries . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1994, pp. 75-78 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Gisela Friedrichsen: Something like that shouldn't be allowed . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 2007 ( online - Nov. 26, 2007 ).
  4. ↑ Max Steller: Statutory psychology in court - methodology and problems of credibility reports with references to the Worms abuse processes . Recht & Psychiatrie 16, 1998, pp. 11-18
  5. ↑ Michael Grabenström: Only the scraps of a balloon? In: Frankfurter Rundschau , June 18, 1997; Incorrect digitization ( memento of the original from July 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) 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. Gisela Friedrichsen: Well meant, badly done . In: Der Spiegel . No. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pappa.com
     26 , 1997, pp. 78-79 ( online ). ; Hans Lorenz: In clear contradiction (letter to the editor from the presiding judge). In: Der Spiegel 38/1997, p. 14
    ' , Menschen bei Maischberger, DasErste.de, May 17, 2005; Broadcast as video ( real )
  6. ^ Mechthild Henneke: Back in Pfeddersheim . In: Berliner Zeitung , June 25, 1997
  7. ↑ Max Steller : Nothing but the truth? Why anyone can be found innocent . Heyne Verlag, Munich 2015, ISBN 9783641114107 , Exact text passage in Google Books preview .
  8. ↑ Federal Court of Justice sets minimum requirements for criminal procedural credibility reports . BGH press release No. 63, July 30, 1999 ( at lexetius )
  9. ↑ Gisela Friedrichsen: The matter is not over . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 2005, p. 50-56 ( online ).
  10. ↑ Gisela Friedrichsen : Something like that shouldn't be allowed . In: Der Spiegel . No. 48 , 2007, p. 63-64 ( online ).
  11. ↑ Reinhard Breidenbach: Imprisonment on suspicion of abuse - the police find incriminating pictures from the ex-director of the Spatzennest children's home .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Rhein Main Presse , February 9, 2008@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.main-spitze.de  
  12. ↑ Markus Fadl: Educator is banned from working because of child abuse . In: Der Tagesspiegel , August 22, 2008
  13. ^ Convicted ex-children's home director in court again . Spiegel Online , April 12, 2011
  14. ↑ "Spatzennest" leader has to go to prison for six years . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 14, 2011.
  15. ↑ Spatzennest -leiter sentenced to imprisonment for abuse . In: FAZ, November 14, 2011.