The German Parliament has voted to downgrade the illegality of the possession of child pornography from a felony to a misdemeanor, much to the delight of “pro-pedophile” organizations in the country.
The Bundestag, Germany’s directly-elected chamber of Parliament, passed the bill on Thursday, which declared that “possession and acquisition [of child pornography] should be punishable with a minimum penalty of three months’ imprisonment, and distribution with a minimum penalty of six months’ imprisonment, and distribution with a minimum penalty of six months’ imprisonment.” When the bill goes into effect, the offences are to be “classified as misdemeanors and not as crimes.”
In 2021, possession of child sexual abuse materials was reclassified as a felony crime after the then Justice Minister introduced a minimum sentence of one year. Only three years later, the new legislation blamed the reclassification for having deleterious effects on a number of edge cases for those caught with the material.
“Such cases have occurred particularly frequently among parents and teachers of older children or young people who found child pornography on them and passed it on to other parents, teachers or the school management to inform them of the problem,” the bill argued.
“A downgrade to a misdemeanor is also urgently required in order to be able to respond appropriately and with the necessary flexibility to the large proportion of juvenile offenders,” the bill continued. “Here, too, the perpetrators generally do not act in order to be sexually aroused by the child pornography content, but rather out of a drive typical of the adolescent stage of development, such as naivety, curiosity, thirst for adventure or the desire to impress.”
However, the CSU, the sister party to the CDU in Bavaria and the main centre-right party in Germany, released a statement of opposition, arguing that if the bill wanted to fix the “problem cases,” then it should have focused on that, rather than demanding a “blanket reduction in the penalty range” for the crime.
“The distribution, possession and acquisition of child pornography must, in principle, remain classified as crimes,” the declaration said. “Scientific findings show that if the penalty framework shifts downwards, the penalties imposed in practice also tend to be lower.”
In response to the news, Krumme-13, or K13, a pro-pedophile activist group, explicitly celebrated the changes in the law. Its founder, Dieter Gieseking, said on its website last week that the “unconstitutional tightening of punishments” had been removed, but lamented the supposed “thousands upon thousands of those affected who fell victim” to the previous ruling on child sexual abuse material.
Gieseking suggested that anyone currently facing a case should have their lawyers “submit applications for stays of proceedings” in order to avoid the current sentencing guidelines.
As previously reported by The Publica, Gieseking, who has served multiple sentences for the possession of child pornography and has argued for the lowering of the age of consent to 12, had successfully submitted a draft petition to the Bundestag on the topic of “children’s rights.”
The petition was grouped together with a number of other proposals, and argued that children should “have the right to have a say in all matters that affect their emotional, mental and physical well-being” and “the right to the free development of their personality.”
The latter clause references Article 2 of the German Basic Law, which explicitly includes “sexual self-determination.”
