3. August 2022
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A dentist who had already been sentenced to five months in prison and a fine in August 2021 for passing on drugs to minors was given an additional five months in Linz on Wednesday.
According to the public prosecutor, the now 60-year-old is said to have owned a “huge collection” of child pornography. He also secretly filmed employees changing clothes in his practice. The judgment is not final.
The public prosecutor accused the doctor of having placed a mobile phone in the changing room of his surgery in July and August 2017. Due to the orientation of the camera, he is said to have had a view of the genital area of the secretly filmed employees. He saved at least eight of these videos on data carriers before they were secured in February last year.
In addition, investigators found around 10,000 porn images when evaluating seized data carriers – 400 of them are said to show girls under the age of 18 or 14. Since the year 2000, the dentist is said to have saved the relevant files on several external hard drives.
On the first day of the trial in the Linz Regional Court in January, the defense attorney spoke of an “incredible dirt bucket campaign” against his client. His office is now closed.
In addition, the legal representative had filed an application for bias and exceeding the authority of the expert. The computer scientist had divided the photos into adult, underage and underage girls and found “pedophilic tendencies” in the accused. The legal representative missed the medical basis for the age determination. In January, the court ordered a supplementary report from that expert, which protracted the process.
The accused himself claimed that he had no knowledge of the existence of the child pornography. When he took a three-year break from working as a dentist because of a herniated disc, he started working as a photographer for some studios, he told the court. When this cooperation ended in a dispute, he threw his equipment, which all photographers could have access to, in a “box”. Since then it would be standing around with him. During the house search, the hard drives with the pornography were found in the said box.
The doctor did not deny the secret filming in the changing room. However, he only took the cell phone recordings to clarify the disappearance of money from the coffee register at the reception. For the public prosecutor, this was a “far-fetched attempt at justification,” as he emphasized in the closing argument. The accused was concerned with seeing “as much bare skin as possible”.
The judge found the dentist guilty on both counts and imposed an additional sentence of five months’ imprisonment. The defense attorney immediately announced a nullity complaint and an appeal. He still doubts the expertise of the appraiser, who does not want to have recognized manipulated porn images as such.
He also said that of the “allegedly thousands of pictures” only 146 remained – counting 22 duplicates. 87 photos would have a source reference from a registered home page. “In the end we’re talking about two handfuls of photos of naked girls and no pornographic depictions,” he said, among other things, justifying his plea for an acquittal.
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