Free after abuse

Anna Sofia (12) can meet her tormentors at any time

Antonsplatz in Favoriten at the center of an abuse crime involving a 12-year-old girl(Bild: Martin Jöchl, stock.adobe.com/Dmitri Maruta Krone KREATIV,)

What must this girl who was repeatedly abused by a multicultural gang have gone through! All 17 suspects - from the same neighborhood as the 12-year-old - are already free again ...

Their names are Sahin, Mustafa, Kalek, Harun or Leutrim - all between 13 and 18 years old at the time of the crime. The children's room offenders from the Vienna hotspot district of Favoriten play in soccer clubs and laugh from Instagram and TikTok videos. Six of the 17 suspects have Austrian citizenship or were born here. All of them have a migrant background. From Syria to Turkey to North Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Italy. What they all have in common is the shocking criminal case surrounding the alleged serial abuse of a minor that lasted at least six months until last summer.

Fear of revenge
What 12-year-old Anna (name changed by the editors) had to endure at the hands of her tormentors, who even filmed and blackmailed her with cell phones, is heartbreaking. And even now, although the State Office of Criminal Investigation is feverishly investigating, the schoolgirl has to live in fear of revenge. Because all the suspected rapists are at large. They are better protected by the more lenient juvenile criminal law and have a legal residence.

Films of rapes sent on
And this prolongs Anna's suffering. This is because both the young people and the victim live in the same area where the crime scenes, such as a rented hotel room, an apartment, an underground parking garage or a stairwell, can be found. This means that the perpetrators and Anna could run into each other at any time. It is also unclear how much child pornographic material from the gang rapes was forwarded on the at least four confiscated cell phones.