German woman punished more harshly than rapist for defamation

A German woman received a harsher sentence than a convicted rapist after calling him a “disgraceful rapist pig.”

Maja R., 20, was sentenced to a weekend in prison after being found guilty of defaming the man who was reportedly one of nine attackers who raped a 15-year-old girl in a Hamburg park four years earlier.

The man was only given a suspended sentence and did not have to serve a prison sentence due to his age, the New Zealand Herald reported.

Maja R. reportedly did not know the rapist, but was one of at least 140 people who sent him derogatory messages via WhatsApp after his name and number were leaked on Snapchat.

“Aren’t you ashamed when you look in the mirror?” she wrote, calling him a “disgraceful rapist pig” and a “disgusting monster.”

She also told the attacker that he “couldn’t go anywhere without getting kicked in the face” and said, “Let’s hope you just get locked up.”

Maja R. said in court that she sent the message “without thinking twice” – a brave act for a country with notoriously strict defamation laws.

However, the pediatric nursing student apologized to the rapist and stated in court that it had “helped no one.”

The man, whose name was not disclosed by the New Zealand Herald, was one of nine teenagers convicted of abusing the 15-year-old girl for several hours in September 2020.

Almost all of them escaped prison under German juvenile criminal law, with the exception of one Iranian citizen who brazenly took responsibility for the rape by telling the court: “What man doesn’t want that?”

Maja R. was punished more severely than the rapist she defamed because she already had a previous conviction for theft and had not appeared at the court hearing.

A court spokesman told local media that Maja R.’s hostility was symbolic of the anger that still lingers in the country over the rape case four years later.

The case had “reached a new, worrying level of intensity,” he said, describing the criticism as a “targeted attack on the rule of law.”

Germany is known to have strict defamation laws that criminalize even the mildest insults.

Calling someone an “idiot” can be punished with a prison sentence of up to two years in Germany.