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SEX

Man admits sexually abusing 75 children

A 40-year-old man from Bavaria is being charged with sexually abusing 75 children over a period of 13 years, police reported on Monday. The man confessed that in some cases, he lured kids with pornography into a basement where the abuse took place.

Published: 22 December 2008 14:20 CET

Police in Nuremberg said the man, who has no previous criminal record, sexually abused boys and girls between the ages of five and 11 in several cities across Bavaria.

Police first picked up the man’s trail this summer after he exposed himself in front of an eight-year-old girl in the city of Erfurt. She told friends about the incident and the authorities got involved. In August, the man was arrested. Investigators then connected him to a previous case in Fürth in which a seven-year-old girl was abused.

“The perpetrator lured the children either with pornographic pictures or under some other pretense into a basement and then performed sexual acts on them or with himself,” police said in a statement.

Using DNA samples, investigators were then able to connect the man to another nine abuse cases that police were following.

In his confession, the man admitted to a total of 52 abuse cases involving 75 children, some of which had not even been reported. The abuse took place in the Nuremberg region, as well as in the cities of Fürth, Erlangen, München, Augsburg und Regensburg.

CRIME

Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country's leaders decried as a threat to democracy.

Published: 5 May 2024 12:52 CEST
Teenager turns self in after attack on German politician

The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.

Matthias Ecke, 41, European parliament lawmaker for Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), was set upon by four attackers as he put up EU election posters in Dresden on Friday night, according to police.

Ecke was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said.

Scholz on Saturday condemned the attack as a threat to democracy.

“We must never accept such acts of violence,” he said.

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s European election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police said a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had been “punched” and “kicked” earlier in the evening on the same Dresden street.

Last week two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and another was surrounded by dozens of demonstrators in her car in the east of the country.

According to provisional police figures, 2,790 crimes were committed against politicians in Germany in 2023, up from 1,806 the previous year, but less than the 2,840 recorded in 2021, when legislative elections took place.

A group of activists against the far right has called for demonstrations against the attack on Ecke in Dresden and Berlin on Sunday, Der Spiegel magazine said.

According to the Tagesspiegel newspaper, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is planning to call a special conference with Germany’s regional interior ministers next week to address violence against politicians.

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