Ex-ballet director must pay for dog excrement attack
Because a journalist slated his production, Hanover's ballet director smears dog excrement on her face. Goecke loses his job for the attack. The court sentences him to pay a mid-four-figure fine. The case is dropped. The victim is satisfied.
The criminal proceedings against the former ballet director of the Hanover State Opera, Marco Goecke, for a dog excrement attack on a journalist have been dropped in return for a fine. A spokeswoman for the Hanover public prosecutor's office confirmed this afternoon that Goecke had paid a mid-four-figure sum to an association that deals with victim-offender mediation and conflict resolution.
In February, Goecke had confronted a critic of the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (FAZ) in the foyer at a ballet premiere and smeared dog excrement on her face during an argument. She pressed charges. Goecke was suspended from the state opera in the capital of Lower Saxony with immediate effect, banned from the house and finally dismissed.
According to the spokeswoman, the public prosecutor's office considered the attack to be an assault. The authorities justified the dismissal of the case by stating that Goecke had not yet been prosecuted, had shown insight into the injustice committed after the attack, had suffered considerable economic losses and that his reputation had also suffered as a result of the incident.
FAZ critic waives civil action
The affected critic of the "FAZ", Wiebke Hüster, was satisfied with the outcome of the proceedings. "For me, everything is fine the way it is," Hüster told the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung". The journalist is not seeking civil proceedings in which she could have claimed compensation for pain and suffering.
The background to Goecke's assault was a review of one of his choreographies published by the journalist a few days earlier. In the article, the critic called the production an "embarrassment and an impertinence" and wrote that the audience was "alternately mad and killed by boredom".
Source: www.ntv.de
