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Germany identifies 439 suspects in paedophile probe

More than 400 suspected paedophiles have been identified in Germany as part of a probe into a huge child pornography network linked to the city of Bergisch Gladbach, investigators said on Wednesday.

Published: 12 January 2022 15:12 CET

Investigation group leader Michael Esser speaks at a press conference on Wednesday.

Investigation group leader Michael Esser speaks at a press conference on Wednesday. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Federico Gambarini

A total of 439 suspects have been identified and 65 children have been freed from the clutches of paedophiles since the network was uncovered in October 2019, the Berg special investigation group said.

“We have suspects from all walks of life” including “high earners and highly educated people” as well as “ordinary people”, said investigation group leader Michael Esser.

“They went about their work quite normally and there were no indications in the working environment that such acts had been committed,” Esser said.

Most of the children were abused by a member of their own family, the investigators said.

The victims were aged between under a year old and 17, with the youngest rape victim just three months old at the time of the crime.

The Bergisch Gladbach case was opened in 2019 with the arrest of a suspect known as Jörg L.

Police then were shocked to stumble upon a vast network of paedophiles who abused children and shared images of the crimes in online chat groups and discussion forums, leading to one of Germany’s biggest ever child sex abuse investigations.

The state’s justice minister, Peter Biesenbach, announced last year that investigators had come across 30,000 potential suspects connected with the network.

Jörg L. was sentenced to 12 years in jail in October 2020 for sexually abusing his daughter since she was three months old.

He was found guilty of dozens of acts of child abuse and rape as well as distributing child pornography, mostly involving his daughter who was born in 2017.

Germany has been shaken by several serious cases of child abuse in recent years.

Eleven people were arrested in June 2020 on suspicion of sexually abusing children and filming their actions after videos and photos were seized from the cellar of a 27-year-old man from the city of Muenster.

In an earlier scandal in Luegde, 125 kilometres (80 miles) from Muenster, several men abused children at a campsite for years.

The government in 2020 agreed tougher punishments for using and sharing child pornography as part of a crackdown on child abuse.

Member comments

Anonymous - 13 January 2022 at 10:26 CET

Crazy and sad. However is a good news they had been found.

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Bavarian police go pantless in protest of uniform shortage

The Bavarian state chapter of the German Police Union (DPolG) has released a video showing two officers caught without pants on the job.

In the video two police officers have a brief conversation in their patrol car: “So, how long have you been waiting?” One says she has waited four months, the other says he has waited six.

Then they get out of their patrol car in their underpants.

The police union intentionally released the video to draw attention to a short supply of uniforms available to Bavarian police.

The video was released on April 1st, but chairman of the Bavarian branch of the German Police Union, Jürgen Köhnlein has clarified that the video is not an April Fool’s joke but a serious attempt to highlight the severity of the issue.

The video was uploaded to Youtube and posted on the police union website. It has since been reposted by local news outlets such as Bavarian news portal BR24.

How serious is the uniform shortage?

Köhnlein suggests that some police units in Bavaria have reached the point where officers can no longer work in a decent uniform.

In a press release put out by the police union, Köhnlein said that, “Currently, 21 uniform parts, such as trousers, jackets and caps, are only available with wait times of several months.”

He added that in many cases officers are working in their last pair of trousers with no backups available if something happens to them.

Additionally, he wants to prevent officers from needing to wear their winter trousers in the summer.

READ ALSO: Germans strip off for ‘No Pants Subway Ride’

Why can’t the police find clothes?

The lack of uniforms is reportedly the result of supply chain bottlenecks that have led to uniform shortages since Covid.

The German police union accuses the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior for not sufficiently managing the shortage of uniforms.

For its part, the ministry says that their supply is limited for individual clothing items. In particular, the supply bottlenecks have affected certain types of trousers, such as multi-purpose trousers for summer.

The Bavarian police obtain their uniforms from a logistics centre in Lower Saxony, which is reportedly managing a lot of issues: some textile shops have closed, ordering in large quantities is not always possible, goods with quality defects often need to be sent back, and the Bavarian uniforms have unique colour requirements.

This is not the first time the police union has publicly complained about uniform issues. In 2020, the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior registered hundreds of complaints about uniform trousers that were ill-fitting and low-quality.

According to local news outlet Nord Bayern, a decision was to be made at that time as to whether Bavaria’s police force would be equipped with its own logistics centre. Four years later, it seems the issue has still not been resolved.

READ ALSO: Deutsche Bahn rolls out gender-neutral uniform policy

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