Hatred of gays: Trial against a man from Bremen - verdict passed

For months one person terrorized young men for homophobic motives. Today the perpetrator was sentenced to several years in prison in Bremen.

Bremen - Today, Friday, a homophobic man was convicted in Bremen for stalking gay teenagers and young men and for committing a number of crimes on the Internet for months. BuzzFeed.com * reported on this . The trial against 32-year-old Daniel S. is one of the most drastic cases of homophobia in recent years. Four years after the crimes, the Bremen Regional Court passed a verdict today.

Bremen: Man terrorizes young homosexual people - now the judge is ruling

It is an extraordinary procedure, said the presiding judge when the verdict was pronounced. A process in which “the first time you read the file, you put your hands over your head and ask: Why? Why? ”It is a matter of massive acts of reenactment against young homosexual people, with consequences in some cases to this day. With his verdict, he went beyond the sentence demanded by the public prosecutor's office and sentenced the perpetrator to a total of four years and six months, despite mitigating circumstances. 

Daniel S. was accused of 68 criminal offenses and the Bremen Regional Court sentenced him to four years in prison.

© Juliane Loeffler / BuzzFeed News

 The public prosecutor had accused Daniel S. of a total of 68 acts *: including disturbing the public peace, sedition, threats, insults, and numerous cases of fraud that he is said to have committed on the Internet. But the reenactments, i.e. the stalking cases, are particularly serious: The perpetrator terrorized four young homosexual men for months. BuzzFeed News had already reported on the case of the particularly badly affected Max O. in early 2019 *. According to a psychiatric report, the man has a combined personality disorder and was judged to be of reduced culpability. Even so, the court found that he acted willfully.

In addition to Max O., three other young gay men are affected by the "stalking", according to the official criminal offense.

© Juliane Löffler / BuzzFeed News

To this day, hateful violence against lesbians, gays, bisexual and intersexuals or trans people is only incompletely recorded in Germany. In some federal states, the number of attacks is not recorded at all; not all states spend money on specific prevention projects. This is another reason why the number of unreported acts of violence against queer people is extremely high, according to a nationwide research by BuzzFeed News *. Convictions or even prison sentences for hate violence against LGBT + people are rare in Germany.

Daniel S., sentenced today in Bremen, is an extreme case: The extent of his actions is difficult to keep track of: The perpetrator sent the men dozens, sometimes hundreds, of messages over months on Facebook and on their mobile phones, threatened and insulted them in messages and pictures sent them death threats. Family members and friends of the victims were also directly affected by the stalking. According to the indictment, he sent one of the victims a message that read: "[...] I will kill you and your whole family, everyone will die."

Daniel S. directed his hatred indiscriminately against people he had not known before, especially homosexuals. He came into contact with his young victims mainly through the digital youth network “You are not alone”. * BuzzFeed.com is part of the Ippen-Digital network