The Kiel public prosecutor’s office has appealed against the Lübeck regional court’s verdict against a former public prosecutor for raping his son. Chief Public Prosecutor Axel Bieler confirmed this to the German Press Agency on Tuesday.
On February 14, the regional court sentenced the 52-year-old defendant to a suspended sentence of one year and six months. Four months of the sentence are considered to have already been served. The son was eight years old at the time of the crime at the end of March 2019.
Defense attorney Johann Schwenn had already stated after the verdict: “It is clear that the verdict will be appealed.” The defense, like the prosecution, had demanded an acquittal.
The man did not deny the terrible event, but claims that he acted in his sleep that night: The 7th Grand Criminal Chamber does not follow the defense’s theory that the man committed the crime while sleepwalking. The trial was less about the sexual acts themselves than about the circumstances that night in the family’s bedroom at the end of March 2019.
When his wife confronted the defendant with the allegations the next morning, he had no memory of the incident. He later turned himself in. His wife filed for divorce.
