Brno court: pensioner gets eight years for abusing a schoolgirl

A Brno court has sentenced a pensioner to eight years in prison for sexually abusing a schoolgirl, his step-granddaughter. According to the verdict, handed down in mid-summer, the abuse lasted about two years. Details of the case are not given because of its sensitive nature.

The girl stayed silent under the threat that if she told anyone, a “war” would break out at home. Later she confided in a friend and then spoke about what had happened at school. But she found no support in her family: her grandmother did not believe her and, on the contrary, tried to persuade her to change her testimony. The girl had expected to return to her grandmother's home with the offender gone, but in the end she was the one who had to leave. She is now in foster family care.

The defense failed to convince the court

At the trial the man denied everything. He hinted that the schoolgirl had made it all up because of a ban on piercings, and cited a urological condition that supposedly made him incapable of such acts. Doctors and, in part, his partner contradicted this. An examination of his computer also showed that he had searched for relevant pornographic content.

The court called the defense not credible and refuted. According to the judges, the girl developed post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of what she went through, which seriously complicates her life. She could not defend herself: she was financially dependent on her grandfather and grandmother, and next to an eleven-year-old schoolgirl, a man almost 180 centimeters tall and weighing 130 kilograms had an enormous physical advantage.

The convicted man had been punished before, including for violent offenses. He faced five to twelve years, and the court imposed eight years.

The presiding judge noted that the result of the crime was the girl's loss of the family that had been her normal one since childhood.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz