Vienna Regional Court hears cybergrooming case involving three underage victims
A 47-year-old defendant stands accused before the Vienna Regional Court of Criminal Matters of abusively contacting three young girls online.
Vienna Regional Court hears cybergrooming case involving three underage victims
On Wednesday, 10 June, proceedings begin at the Vienna Regional Court of Criminal Matters against a 47-year-old man. The allegation is cybergrooming: between May and December 2024, he is said to have sought out three underage girls online and incited them to engage in sexually abusive acts. The victims are also said to have been asked to record the incidents in video or image form and send them to him.
The prosecution believes that the accused deliberately searched for underage users in social networks. As soon as these users started a livestream accessible to everyone, he is said to have made contact. On the Instagram platform, he posed as a girl of the same age and gained the children's trust through repeated conversations, according to the charges. The three affected victims were aged 13 and 12 at the time of the alleged offences.
The man is accused of at least forty assaults. In one case, he is said to have seriously pressured the victim and threatened to share the recorded material with family members and a riding instructor unless further recordings were provided.
The defendant was taken into custody at the end of June 2025 and has been in remand detention since then, as authorities fear a risk of reoffending. During a search of his flat, investigators seized several storage media containing thousands of child sexual abuse materials. He had previously been convicted in a final judgment for possession of such material.
A psychiatric expert report diagnoses the man with a fixated paedophilic disorder, classified as a serious and persistent mental illness. The experts recommend placement in a forensic-therapeutic facility under Section 21 (2) of the Criminal Code. According to this, there is a concrete risk that, following release from custody, the convicted person could commit serious criminal offences with considerable consequences in the near future.
Should the court follow the charges, the defendant faces a prison sentence of up to ten years.
Source: MeinBezirk.at
Source: Google News AT — Crime (de)