Well what a very interesting article I just read over on Websleuths
IN THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE?
He is the main suspect in the Maddie case. He has now been charged with three counts of rape and two counts of sexual abuse at Braunschweig District Court. Christian B. was acquitted. Jutta Rabe watched the entire trial - and is stunned.
n the name of the people, the following judgement is passed: The accused is acquitted.’ These words, spoken on 8 October 2024 by Ute Inse-Engemann, presiding judge at the Braunschweig Regional Court, caused unrest in the auditorium. Some left the courtroom.
This was followed by the reasons for the judgement, which the judge presented for over an hour. She began by explaining that she did not want to ‘bow to the expectations of the media and the regulars’ tables’. In view of the reporting, it was very obvious that the accused had been prejudged. But: she, the judge, nevertheless decided in favour of an acquittal.
What was this trial about? Christian B. is also the main suspect in the ‘Maddie’ case and has had a long list of previous convictions from an early age, including for rape and sexual abuse
among other things. However, this trial was not (yet) about Maddie McCann, the then four-year-old girl who disappeared from a Portuguese holiday resort in 2007, but about five other charges: In two cases, Christian B. is accused of raping and abusing women. According to the public prosecutor, he recorded these offences on video himself. Helge B. and Manfred S., two former mates of Christian B., found the videos in his flat in Portugal when B. was in prison. They had broken into the flat in 2006 and stolen two video cameras on which they claimed to have seen the rape and torture of an elderly woman and a young girl.
Although the videos have disappeared, the two witnesses testified that they recognised Christian B. as the perpetrator on the videos.
Point 3: This was also about the serious rape and torture of a student in 2004. Hazel Behan from Ireland said that she recognised Christian B. from a newspaper photo as the rapist who had not only raped her several times over four hours in her holiday flat in Portugal, but had also tortured her.
Point 4: The sexual harassment of a German girl in Portugal. Joana E., who was ten years old in 2007, explained that she also recognised Chris- tian B. as the man who had ambushed her on the beach in Salema on holiday, held her down and pleasured himself in front of her.
According to the fifth and final charge, Christian B. allegedly masturbated in front of a group of little girls, aged eleven and twelve, on a playground in Messines in Portugal. Christian B. was reported to the police by the angry parents. A policewoman then arrested him and discovered that he was the subject of an international arrest warrant and a request for extradition from the German authorities.
Christian B. already had several previous convictions, including the sexual abuse of his former girlfriend's five-year-old daughter in Braunschweig and the rape of a 72-year-old American pensioner in Praia da Luz, Portugal, whom he had also tortured and stolen from. He is currently still serving this last prison sentence of seven years.
But back to the sentencing and the judge's accusation against the media. ‘If a person is stylised in the media as a sex monster and child murderer, then it is obvious to the witnesses that it must have been the person in this case,’ the judge explained.
But: The media should, indeed must, also report in order to warn the public about a man whom the court psychologist had placed in the ‘top league of dangerousness’. And: Which of the witnesses were actually supposed to have been influenced by the media coverage? Most of them had already made their initial statements
before Chris tian B. came to the attention of the media. So the judge can only really have meant herself and her chamber by ‘influencing’.
After 37 days in court, the downright humiliating questioning methods of the judge and after her cancellation of the arrest warrants against Christian B., nobody really expected Judge Engemann to convict the convicted rapist and child abuser in her trial. After all, by cancelling the arrest warrants against Christian B. back in July 2024 - after just half of the witnesses had even been heard - she had already signalled that she did not consider him to be an urgent suspect. Which, to put it mildly, was surprising.
THE JUDGE CANCELLED THE ARREST WARRANT BEFORE ALL THE WITNESSES HAD TESTIFIED
Following the cancellation of the arrest warrant, the public prosecutor's office had filed an application for recusal against the court. It was rejected.
Although some of the witnesses gave very detailed and credible accounts of the five charges before the Braunschweig Regional Court, Judge Engemann came to the conclusion that they were either not telling the truth, did not remember precisely enough or could not really remember anyway. For example, the judge assumed that the girls had mistaken Christian B.'s urination for mastur- bation.
She completely ignored the fact that other witnesses supported the statements of the main witnesses.
In the case of the rape videos, for example, a former girlfriend of Christian B., Marina F., a travelling saleswoman from Dresden, had presented a handwritten note from him in which Christian B. urgently asked her to get the video cameras and the associated video tapes out of his house in Portugal as quickly as possible, as otherwise he feared ‘that the police might find them - and then the police would find them.
the police might find them - and then he would have to spend a very long time in prison’.
Christian B. sent this note, with further instructions to his then lover Marina F., to her from prison in Portimao. He had been imprisoned there for eight months in 2006 for stealing diesel together with a partner in crime. Marina F.'s testimony was also corroborated by another statement from a former mate of Christian B., whom he is also said to have asked for help during his imprisonment. Chris- tian P. testified that he had taken several boxes of DVDs out of the house, which B. had allegedly labelled as data carriers of ‘perverted sex practices’.
Judge Engemann paid no attention to these two witnesses. She did not consider the two main witnesses to be credible because their testimonies differed slightly from each other. One witness had testified that the beaten and battered woman in the video was around 60 years old, while the other witness estimated her to be around 70 years old. One of the witnesses had previously testified that Christian B. had first whipped and then violated the woman, but now he had reported the course of events the other way round.
When the Irish woman Hazel Behan, who had been raped and tortured for hours, testified and explained that she had recognised Christian B. by two features in particular, the judge did not accept this. Hazel Behan had testified that she had recognised Christian B. by his striking steel-blue eyes, because she could only see them as Christian B. was wearing a mask during the crime. She had also noticed a scar, a tattoo or something similar on the offender's right thigh.
WHY DID THE JUDGE STATE THAT THERE WAS NO SCAR ON THE THIGH?
The judge ruled that Christian B. did not have a scar on his right thigh. She had the investigation files of the Magdeburg State Criminal Police Office from 2016 before her. These files explicitly mentioned a scar on Christian B.'s right thigh. They also contained photos of Christian B. that had been taken before 2017. These photos show a significant scar on his right thigh, which is described in the police file as a relevant physical feature. Had Christian B. had the scar lasered away in the meantime?
Incidentally, Christian B. had already confessed before Judge Engemann in 2016. At the time, he was accused of sexually abusing the five-year-old daughter of his girlfriend at the time. At the time, the judge explained that she had initially considered whether a suspended sentence was an option. However, as Christian B. was a repeat offender, a prison sentence was the only option. She sentenced him to one year and three months in prison, just above the minimum sentence.
t the end of the trial: acquittal. After these 37 days of proceedings, hardly anyone would have been surprised that the judge had included entire passages of the defence lawyer's closing statement from the previous day verbatim in her reasons for the verdict. The public prosecutor, who had demanded 15 years in prison followed by preventive detention, was stunned.
Forensic psychiatrist Christian Riedemann, who had prepared an expert report on Christian B., had warned before the judgement was announced. Christian B. had a much higher risk of reoffending than any other offender known to him.
The Braunschweig public prosecutor's office has since lodged an appeal against the judgement and announced its intention to appeal to the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe. The question now is whether the case will reach the Federal Supreme Court quickly enough. If not, Christian B. will be a free man in September 2025. JUTTA RABE
https://www.emma.de/sites/default/files/digital/2024/12/emma_2025_01_emagazin_84419_krhgb.pdf
