Child and youth welfare facilities
protect the affected child and other children. A few months later, a pedagogue
in the same shared accommodation caught another adolescent when sexually
abusing his younger brother. Both boys stated that there had been several
similar incidents. The technical supervision was informed by the facility about
the incidents. Nonetheless, a spatial separation of victims and perpetrators
inside the shared accommodation was only ordered after receiving a letter from
the AOB that had been informed about the incidents through an anonymous
complaint. In addition, double staffing was prescribed for night shifts.
Insufficient measures to
protect children
On an unannounced visit three months later, the commission found an
atmosphere of fear. The younger children claimed that they were afraid of
the older adolescents and wanted to move out of the shared accommodation.
The molesting adolescents had not been moved to a different facility but were
still living in the shared accommodation. There were no written concepts
or considerations in place regarding how unsupervised contact between the
molesting adolescents and the other children can be prevented either. The
double-staffed night shifts had already stopped after two weeks due to staff
shortages. There was also criticism of the fact that a young mother with her
new-born baby, who needed a lot of support from the staff in caring for the
baby, were living in the shared accommodation. The Land had authorised
the placement of mother and child in the facility even though the shared
accommodation was in a crisis due to the incidents, and urgently needed all
of the available human resources to implement effective measures to prevent
further assaults. The NPM observed a large number of deficiencies and effected
the transfer of seven children to other facilities.
Inadequate
consequences
The protection of the children living in a shared accommodation in Vienna
was also neglected after a 13-year-old had molested younger children there. A
few months later, it was noticed that he had secretly met a 7-year-old girl in
the night. Some time after that, the girl was seriously sexually abused by the
then 14-year-old at such nocturnal meetings in the bathroom. The boy was
suspended and moved to another shared accommodation located, however, in
the same building complex. As there was visual contact from the rooms of the
shared accommodation to other shared accommodations and it thus cannot
be prevented that the two minors constantly run into each other, Commission
5 considered this measure to be completely inadequate to prevent further
assaults.
No sex education
concepts
Effective prevention requires that minors are instructed about the different
types of boundary violation and encouraged to seek help. They need to be
advised on their rights to physical and sexual self-determination, and learn to
question gender stereotypes. Often the underlying structural conditions are in
effect conducive to the occurrence of sexual violence. Structural conditions in
facilities and a too low staffing ratio can mean that boundary violations are
easily missed by the staff. Many employees are aware of the problem but there
are no clearly defined strategies and responsibilities to prevent sexual assaults.
66
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