Sports teacher as perpetrator – ex-pupil indignant: ‘I feel mocked’

“The action of the police and the prosecutor’s office is a very heavy burden for a victim,” emphasizes the now adult young man. When he went to the police in 2019 to file a report, he was “sent away”: “I was told it was pointless, he had already died. And that you cannot report a dead person.” At the time, there were indications from a good friend and possible accomplice of the educator and even an e-mail requesting further investigation. The public prosecutors did not investigate this ex officio.

“Internal Audit”
The person concerned has little faith in an inquiry committee set up by the education service to investigate and process what is happening in the school. A few weeks ago he “described the incidents” to the committee and got the impression “that this is an internal audit”. The fact that Education Director Heinrich Himmer (SPÖ) stated last May that assaults and assaults had only occurred outside of school “really touches me. It’s just completely wrong.” All in all, one thing is clear to him: “There is no doubt that there is a capital failure on the part of the institutions.”

Abused at the gym
As an underage boy in the third grade of high school, the victim was assaulted by his teacher, who taught not only physical education but also biology and physics, during a reading evening in the school’s old gymnasium. Only after the teacher’s suicide did he find the strength to break his silence about the shameful incident. He first confided in a girlfriend and then his parents. In the presence of his mother and his legal representative Herta Bauer, the young man was now ready to speak to the APA with assurances that he would remain anonymous.

Not an isolated case
What happened to him at school was not an isolated incident, the twenty-something reported: “It was just one of many acts then.” During the reading evening at the gym, the other children were already asleep around 11 p.m. when the teacher approached him: “I was aware of what was going to happen next.” Then he tried to “suppress. I partially avoided him (the teacher, take note).” Then he himself observed the insulting actions of the educator against other classmates: “And I knew children to whom the same thing happened.”

For the former pupil, it is still inconceivable that the teaching staff or school management did not notice this: “For example, it was customary for us to sit on his lap in class. Some people really argued about who was sitting on his lap. because we didn’t know otherwise, because it was “normal” for us. The principal even came into the class once when one of us was sitting on his lap. An accompanying teacher, whom we called “class mom”, also saw a lot She must have noticed that.”

The teacher had repeated outbursts of anger in class: “The supervising teacher was constantly looking the other way.” In biology class, the teacher spoke exclusively about sex acts and porn for weeks and stated that he had acted in a porn movie himself. . After physical education, he showered constantly with the students: “You could really see how happy he was that he was allowed to dry the children.”

Students received a photo book
After graduation, the teachers gave the students a thick photo book intended to record the time they spent together at school. In this – the APA could see it – are many photos of scantily clad boys. There are also nude photos taken during a sauna visit – after all, the students are positioned in such a way that their genitals are not visible. “But there are also five CDs with a total of 7,000 photos. You can see more about that,” reports the former student.

The fact that these photos, taken many years before the educator’s suicide and distributed in the school, were not a major problem in the facility or became a subject of excitement, and the education department claims to be aware of it only recently amazing that some of them were made at school events that involved other teachers as well. And the school kids took the yearbook home, which would have left some parents more than surprised and complained after flipping through some of the photos.

Lack of a concrete first suspicion
A few weeks ago, the legal representative of the abuse victim, Herta Bauer, reported to the Public Prosecution Service against an old acquaintance and former student of the educator on suspicion of sexual abuse of minors and abuse of authority. In the absence of a concrete initial suspicion, the complaint was not dealt with by the Public Prosecution Service. “This friend of mine would come to our class regularly, sit in the back, sit there for hours and listen. Then the teacher took him to the gym, where he helped with exercises,” the abuse victim told APA. The acquaintance was also “watching the movie” and noticed a lot, “like how the children on the lap of the teacher sat and were touched”.

This acquaintance came to the school after the sports teacher’s suicide and is said to have emptied the teacher’s locker and taken items – which may include incriminating evidence – of which, according to reports, there is now also a witness statement. The new principal eventually banned him from the house after he became pushy with schoolgirls and allegedly molested some of them.

“This Isn’t Life”
When asked how he was doing several years after the abuse he had endured, the former student of the physical education teacher replied, “It’s not a life.” He can’t sleep and can’t get on the subway. He had to negotiate with the responsible authorities about the reimbursement of the costs of his psychotherapy. “No amount of money can make up for what happened. But there must be an easier way to get reimbursement that pays for my therapy. As it is now, you torture victims,” ​​said the twenty-something.

Ultimately, the traumatic abuse buried the young man’s sporting ambitions. The talented footballer – not least he was in high school, not least because they had a cooperation agreement with FK Austria Vienna at the time – already had a young professional contract with a local first division in his pocket. He trained with prominent kickers and dreamed of an engagement abroad: “But I had to end my football career because of the psychological stress.”