A teacher at a municipal kindergarten in Vienna-Penzing, who was under criminal investigation until December 2023 after allegations of abuse, is facing new charges. The responsible magistrate department 11 (MA 11) also conducted an internal procedure against him until recently – three days after he was hired, a child spoke about new allegations against the man. These date from before the two lines of research began.
MA 11 confirmed a corresponding report “Vienna Today”. Specifically, the allegations are about sexual assault, as MA 11 emphasized. “A child talked about it during a play situation,” says spokeswoman Ingrid Pöschmann. The attacks allegedly occurred while the man was still working at the facility, the spokeswoman said.
Educators are no longer allowed to work with children since 2021
Until recently, there was an internal child and youth welfare case against him due to similar allegations from 2021. “We have therefore reopened the MA 11 investigation and submitted a corresponding statement of facts to the Vienna Public Prosecutor,” said Pöschmann Abend. Pöschmann emphasized that the man has not worked with children since 2021.
The first case was recently dropped
The Public Prosecution Service could no longer verify the existence of a corresponding statement of facts late on Thursday evening. The new allegations are certainly explosive. Only last December did the Public Prosecution Service discontinue the proceedings against the man who has now been charged again and another educator due to allegations from 2021 about the suspicion of sexual abuse of minors and partly because of the suspicion of deprivation of liberty. According to Pöschmann, the internal procedure against the man lasted until this year because a “catalog of measures” had to be drawn up. “We wondered what this could look like, so that the employee can work for us again.”
The public prosecutor did not consider the suspicion to be well-founded
The Public Prosecution Service justified the termination of the criminal investigation by stating that “the interrogations of all those involved and further investigative measures” could not substantiate the suspicion, as was said in December 2023. Essential for this was the report of a psychological expert, who in conversations with the children could not find any explanations that confirmed suspicions.
The case caused a stir in 2022. During the course of the case, the management of the municipal kindergartens (MA 10) was also replaced. The responsible municipal councilor Christoph Wiederkehr (NEOS) was dissatisfied at the time with the crisis management surrounding the suspected case.
Source: Krone
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