a. Munich group infiltrated and arrested

Thursday October 30, 2003, night, many of the members of the Munich group and other people who they know have been arrested and accused. The houses of eighteen people were searched and twelve were arrested, the speakers of the group were among them. They are charged to have formed a criminal group. It is said that they have used the label of a self help group only to hide their criminal activities, especially producing, exchanging and hiding forbidden pornographic material. 

The main charge brought against the people involved in the Munich case has been adherence to and forming of a criminal association (§129 StGB). This is an ages old provision (which has been abused sometimes and which is, in a way, dangerous). It may have been subconsciously confused with §§ 129a, 129b StGB, concerning the terrorist association and foreign ones, the latter being an unwanted fruit of the war against terrorism. 

The German criminal code (Strafgesetzbuch, StGB) contains two provisions regarding what may be called criminal association in a wider sense. § 29 StGB makes it a crime to per se to enter an agreement to commit a felony (this is a kind of attempted crime), and § 129 StGB makes it a crime to support or be member of an association which is used to commit crimes. 

The danger lies in sometimes extensive interpretations of the support clause, e.g. when normal communication is maliciously interpreted as criminal support, as often in political cases. 

As far as I know it is relatively unusual to use this law, as it is usually sufficient to punish the crimes proper -- this provision is really only for the cases where the division of work makes the persecution difficult. 

However, there is a definite tendency here to see conspiracies (organisierte Kriminalität) everywhere. This may be due to the tendency of the police to overstate the cases, which is well established.

The group had been infiltrated by a journalist of the magazine "Stern", Manfred Karremann, who called himself Bernd Waibl and presented himself as a Pedo. He attended not only the Munich group, but investigated also in Berlin and at the AG-Pädo meetings. So he could take many phone and film recordings which were presented to the police and in part in the German television. He wrote a series of two articles in the last two issues of the magazine "Stern" too. According to the police there had been another police under cover agent in the Munich group since one year. 

The Munich group is paralyzed now. It has to be seen, how the court trials will end. If the group as a whole will be discharged from the suspicion of being a criminal organization, then it might be possible to take up the work somehow again. 

The whole affair is a big backslash for the emancipation and self-help work not only in Munich, but for all Germany. One other group has dissolved itself already out of fear. There will be the meeting of the AHS in Mainz. There will be discussions how to carry on. The AHS itself got under pressure too.

b. Letter to the Editor of the Süddeutschen Zeitung, Munich

Translated by Ipce

Concerning the article 'Pedophiles disguise themselves as a self-help group', Süddeutsche Zeitung, 4. 11. 2003

Since the late-70s, there was in Munich a pure legal and open Pedo-Self-Help & Emancipation Group, the Münchner Pädo-Emanzipationsgruppe. 

From the beginning, the meetings have been open: interested people was invited, including police and prosecutors. Without any doubt, the group has been observed by police and the security service. In forty years there never have been serious problems. 

There is not any reason to say that 'Pedophiles disguise themselves as a self-help group'. Eventually, it might be possible that recently some members or visitors of the group, for their own responsibility and in contrast to the self-evidence and the actual practice of the group, have violated the law. 

By the way, pedophilia is not an offence. The fact that the Süddeutsche Zeitung follows the fashion by taking pedophilia as the same as crime, and witch-hunts the pedophiles, means a sliding down to a very low level. 

Werner Wildgartner, 4. 11. 2003. 

c. Letter to Ipce, 19 April 2004 

The investigation against friends and visitors of the Munich group and against other regional and super-regional initiatives have not yet come to an end. Two Munich participants are still in detention pending investigation. I understand that you would like to know and share, what has been happening in Munich and in other cities of Germany (mainly Berlin) since the end of October 2003, but I could not tell much anyway, as the facts are not at all clear. The whole affair seems to have started as a strange kind of cooperation between an undercover working journalist (Martin Karremann alias Bernd Waibl) and the state attorney or the police

The Munich group is inactive now. Illegal pictures have been found in the homes of some (not all !) participants, but it is clear that they were not exchanged at group meetings. Severe allegations came up against two or three other men who never or only very rarely had visited the group. Sixteen of the eighteen arrested of October 2003 have been released by now.

Maybe the group will take up its work again after trials have come to an end and the group has been rehabilitated. Under the present circumstances safe and profound work is not possible. Now it is not possible to contact the group, the postbox and the e-mail account of the group are out of function.

d. PaedoForum closed 

In Germany, op 1 April 2004 a new law says that it is not allowed to positively speak about offences, among which sexual abuse. For surety, the German "PaedoForum" has been taken off-line. A spokesman says:

"First: I think this new laws are so ridiculous that I fear that they may come even more ridiculous laws. The politics in this field are completely out of control. They only follow short term emotions. I don't want to be the one provoking even harsher laws. I think it is better to hold still and concentrate my efforts on well written websites like ahs-online.de or paedo-portal.de than a emotional/angry forum. 

Second: The person who lend his name for the forum for the WHOIS [*] doesn't want to be listed there any more. But I think I would have closed the forum anyway because of the first reason."

[* "WHOIS" is a data base on the Internet, containing the names and addresses of the domain owners.]

e. Webmasters convicted … and acquitted of charge

The first court decision

A webmaster is convicted to eight months in prison, and a staff member to six months and a fine of 3000 euros. 

Why? Because they have placed a text-only file on the web. The file is one of the thousand (!) files of the PDR, the Pedophile Directory Resource, a quite old collection of texts, collected for scientific reasons, that had found place on the web site of Krumme13, a German group. 

In the file, Stephan.html, tells about his relationships with two men when he was 9-11 year old and 13-15 year old. Stephan is absolutely positive about both relationships and he says explicitly not to feel abused. He wrote his report years afterwards, when he himself already had adult sons. Both men were died and he was forgotten to thank them for what they had done. So, he gives his testimony afterwards. 

The prosecutor and the (female) judge in Trier agreed in saying that Stephan's report, as such, is not pornographic, but it became pornography as soon at it was part of a web site that promoted pedophilia. Now, it was promoting abuse. The judge 'reasoned' that the case was abuse, even if Stephan (an adult man while writing!) was not conscious of it. 

Clearly, a positive report may not be told in our time. Clearly, the freedom to express oneself and to do scientific research is limited to what is allowed by right wing authorities. 
What openly could be told were the words of the 'survivors' present in the public's room of the court. For a tv camera, they could tell their ideas about death penalty or castration of 'those people'. For those ideas, there is freedom of expression, not for Stephan and his report. 

The case is absurd, so the condemned have already appealed, which in Germany pauses the conviction. 

The appeal

Translated from: fdpd.org 

The Stephan text from the PRD is now officially declared legal and not dangerous for youth. 
As we have said earlier, this story about the experience of 'Stephan', part of a scientific collection of texts in the PRD, has been viewed in the court in Trier as intentional [wrong] behavior. 

In the meantime, the combated text has been published in a sexual-politic magazine "GiGi", after which it is free accessible for youth. This has been investigated by the prosecutor. The conclusion ends simply and juridically correct with: 

"[…] decided that in this case prosecution not correct is, because there are no clues for a prosecutable act." 

Thus, there really are officials who act in accordance with the law and the constitution. Clearly, the prosecutor and the court in Trier were not among them. 

In the meantime, it became known that # 27 of the sexual-political magazine "GiGi" is presented for indexing under the Law For Youth Protection, a law that should be abolished. In # 27 is the Stephan text, which earlier illegally has been criminalized by purely political motives. 

To index is factually the same as to forbid. Moreover, the social-scientific study "Die Lust am Kind" by Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Lautman, and the crime story "Knabenliebe" (Boylove) by Frank Goyke, which belongs to the well-known recent and progressive gay literature, indexed under this doubtful law. 

Again, supposedly fanatic so-called child advocates and Christian or Catholic fundamentalists have tried to surpass the constitution and the human rights. We might remark that freedom of scientific research and arts are an essential basis for the constitution of a democratic society. If a scientific study, as "Die Lust am Kind", caused controversies, it keeps being a methodologically correct study, which results not can be changed by rational scientific methods. 

It's not the first time that some people try to silence scientists, as if there are reactionary forces that the round earth want to change in a flat one. It's also not the first time that some people try to forbid literary works of a minority, in this case the gays. 

If such actions would be successful, we would leave a society that honestly can be called a constitutional state. It is a trend back to the past, which we some years ago believed to be overcome. 
- - - 

From < http://www.whk.de/whk0504.htm  > 

Control Office for Youth-dangerous Media refuses to index the WHK Magazine. 
Parish strands with accusation of spreading child pornography. 

[…] 
In the meanwhile, the WHK Magazine hears with pleasure that the BPjM [Control Office of Youth-dangerous Media] factually has followed the Berlin prosecutor, who already in October 2003, has declared the anonym Stephan text as not pornographic after an investigation. (…). 
Contrarily, the Court in Trier had convicted two man to eight (factually: six) months in prison for spreading child pornography. "GiGi" had several times reported this scandalous trial. At the end, it has published the forbidden text, to start a debate, and to point to the remarkable lack of harm in it.