A month ago (February 8), the trial once morest former actor Florian Teichtmeister for possession of extensive material with pictorial representations of child abuse (§207a StGB) should have taken place at the Vienna Regional Court. The trial had to be canceled at short notice because the accused was ill. A new hearing date is not in sight for the time being, said court spokeswoman Christina Salzborn on APA request.
According to Salzborn, it can still be assumed that Teichtmeister is not able to stand trial for health reasons. The judge responsible requested documents on Teichtmeister’s current state of health. “It is constantly checked whether there is negotiability,” said Salzborn. Teichtmeister’s legal representative, the Viennese lawyer Michael Rami, did not provide any information on the current condition of his client when asked by APA on Tuesday followingnoon: “I have nothing to say regarding it.”
The Vienna public prosecutor has accused the actor of procuring tens of thousands of files depicting abused children and young people between February 2008 and summer 2021. According to the indictment, Teichtmeister is said to have saved the relevant material on two smartphones, two laptops, a desktop, three external hard drives, a USB stick and three memory cards. The data was secured and evaluated – but apparently it was not finally clarified whether only children or minors are shown on the secured files.
The public prosecutor’s office had been investigating Teichtmeister since 2021, and in autumn 2022 he was still one of two main actors in the comedy “Next door” staged by Burgchef Martin Kušej. The artist has been in therapeutic treatment for a long time. According to his legal representatives – in addition to Rami, the Viennese criminal defense lawyer Philipp Wolm – he confessed to the allegations that were made pending in court on December 13, 2022 in the form of a criminal complaint.
In the wake of the Teichtmeister case, the government has agreed on tougher penalties for acquiring, possessing and passing on or trading in child abuse images. The government plans to increase the penalty for possession of sexually explicit images by consenting minors (14 to 18 years old) from up to one year in prison to up to two years. In the case of minors, the penalty will be increased from up to two years to up to three years. Possession of a “multiple representations” should also lead to higher penalties, although this term has yet to be defined.
