Adrian V., 28, a computer technician and the ringleader, led the sexual abuse from a shed belonging to his mother – who fetched the men breakfast as they assaulted the victims
Four paedophiles have been jailed in Germany for raping boys after luring them to a shed where they drugged them and abused them for days.
Adrian V., 28, a computer technician and the ringleader, led the sexual abuse in a shed belonging to his mother – who fetched the men breakfast as they assaulted the victims.
Along with three other men, Adrian V. was found to have trapped boys in the garden shed from April 2020, where the victims were drugged and raped over the course of three days.
One of the victims, now 11 years old, was the son of his girlfriend.
Prosecutors presented some 30 hours of video evidence, much of which had been shared in darknet forums. The other men are believed to have met Adrian V. online.
They are Marco Sch., 35, an IT expert from Hanover; Tobias Sch., 30, a craftsman from Hesse; and Enrico L., 42, a care provider from Brandenburg. Germany’s privacy laws mean that surnames are not disclosed.
The chief defendant’s mother Carina V., 45, was found to have been aware of the abuse. The court heard that she had brought the men breakfast while they took turns assaulting the children.
The chief defendant’s mother Carina V., 45, was found to have been aware of the abuse. The court heard that she had brought the men breakfast while they took turns assaulting the children in her garden shed in Munster
Adrian V.’s computer rig where he had downloaded more than 500 terabytes of child porn at his mother’s house
Police officers walk past the garden shed where boys were abused by Adrian V. and the three other men in April last year
Adrian V., flanked by his lawyers, holds a folder up to hide his face at the court in Munster on Tuesday
Presiding judge Matthias Pheiler expressed shock at the ‘horrific events’ covered in the trial, calling the video recordings ‘deeply disturbing’.
‘The proceedings also clearly showed how paedophiles operate: they trick, they lie, they manipulate those around’ the victims, he said, adding that he was repulsed to see that the defendants ‘grinned’ and even ‘laughed loudly’ while evidence against them was presented.
Pheiler said he was relieved none of the victims had had to testify in the trial.
Adrian V., from Münster, was jailed for 14 years. The other three men were jailed for between 10 and 12 years.
The mother, Carina V., was jailed for five years for aiding and abetting.
Police are still screening evidence uncovered from the abuse in the shed and have used it to identify suspects across Germany and abroad.
The main defendant Adrian V. holds a folder in front of his face next to his lawyer at the Regional Court in Munster today
The ringleader Adrian V. is said to have ‘grinned’ throughout the trial
Five men have already been convicted and sentenced in connection with the case and investigators have identified 50 suspects, of whom around 30 are in custody.
The current trial began last November and the sentences were broadly in line with what prosecutors had demanded.
It is just one of a series of gruesome child abuse cases to rock the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia over the last year, prompting a tightening of legislation.
In June 2020, investigators said they were probing some 30,000 suspects as part of an investigation into a large online paedophile network linked to the city of Bergisch Gladbach.
In an earlier scandal in Luegde, 80 miles from Munster, several men abused children hundreds of times at a campsite over a number of years.
In response to the series of cases, the German parliament in March agreed tougher punishments for using and sharing child pornography.
The law also gives police and prosecutors broader powers to monitor online communication of suspects.