A man has been molesting children for years - his youngest victim was just a month old. Particularly perfidious: the man offered himself as a babysitter via online platforms in order to get in touch with his victims. Now the district court in Cologne is ordering a long prison sentence.
In the Wermelskirchen crime complex, the Cologne Regional Court sentenced the accused of child abuse to 14 years and six months in prison. The court also ordered preventive detention. This corresponded approximately to the demand of the public prosecutor's office, which had previously demanded 14 years and 10 months in prison and subsequent preventive detention.
The 45-year-old German had offered himself as a babysitter via online platforms and had thus come into contact with his victims. The IT expert also recorded his actions on video. During the trial he confessed to the crimes and described them as "disgusting". The man was charged with more than 120 cases of sexual violence against 13 children from 2005 to 2019. According to the indictment, the youngest victim was a girl around one month old.
The uncovering of the case had caused a stir because, like other abuse complexes in recent years, it had led to many further investigations. The man was arrested by police special forces in December 2021 in a house he shared with his wife.
During the trial, a police officer reported on the witness stand that they wanted to arrest the accused on the "open computer" at the time in order to gain access to the videos of the crimes and to the collection of other child pornography. During the access, the man was in a video conference with work colleagues.
