Germany horrified by accounts of boy’s severe sexual abuse

BERLIN — The case would have stoked public outrage if the mother had known her young son was being raped and had done nothing to stop it.

But when Germans heard that she and her boyfriend had raped the boy themselves and served him up to pedophiles on the dark web,the fury only grew.

The mother and her companion — identified only as Berrin T., 48, and Christian L., 39, in keeping with German privacy laws — were convicted Tuesday of sexually abusing her son over the course of two years, beginning when he was about 7. The abuse included inappropriate touching, rape and making videos that were placed as advertisements on the dark web for pedophiles — among them a German soldier — who paid the couple thousands of dollars to abuse the boy.

For many Germans, the most horrific part of an already horrific case was the woman’s complicity, which contradicted the common image of sexual predators as male.

Interest groups and politicians called for an investigation and for better training of social workers and judges in recognizing potential sexual abuse of children. Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig, Germany’s independent commissioner for questions pertaining to sexual abuse of children, called for an inquiry to determine what signals may have been missed.

“There were obviously structural problems in cooperation between the courts and authorities that must now be thoroughly investigated,” Mr. Rörig said. “The case in Staufen has exposed an array of misjudgments and failures. We owe it to this child to draw the right consequences.”

The pair, who lived in Staufen, in southwestern Germany, were arrested in September. They were found guilty Tuesday of 40 charges of aggravated sexual assault, including rape, forced prostitution, distribution of child pornography and child endangerment. Both had admitted at the start of the 11-day trial to abusing the boy, now 10.

Christian L. was also found guilty of sexually assaulting a 2-year-old girl in early 2015. He was sentenced to 12 years in jail and ordered to remain in preventive custody upon his release.

When the trial opened in June, Christian L. admitted to the charges of abuse, telling the judge, “I am the main culprit.”

But the judge handed a longer prison sentence, of 12 and a half years, to the boy’s mother. She was always present during the assaults, the court said.