Reform proposal for law against child pornography
Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) is pushing ahead with the announced reform of the law against depictions of abuse. Specifically, the minimum penalty for the distribution, acquisition and possession of child pornography content is to be reduced from the current one-year prison sentence - depending on the offense - to three to six months. This was announced by the Ministry of Justice in Berlin. The federal states and associations can now comment on the draft bill.
The reform is intended to prevent people from being punished whose aim was not to spread images of abuse. "A mother, for example, who discovers child pornographic material in a class chat and forwards it to warn other parents about the images must currently be punished with a prison sentence of at least one year," said Buschmann. "This is not fair, because the current legal situation punishes people who want to prevent the distribution of such material."
The minister continued: "The maximum sentence of up to ten years' imprisonment remains unchanged - so that people who sexually abuse children, take pleasure in such images or disseminate them for profit can continue to be severely punished."
In doing so, Buschmann wants to revoke a stricter penalty that has been in place since July 2021, which he believes has not proven effective in practice. This should also take into account cases in which people have unintentionally come into possession of images of abuse. The new reform should also allow the lower minimum penalty to apply to "young offenders who have acted out of an impulse typical of a young person's stage of development, such as naivety, curiosity, a thirst for adventure or a desire to show off".
The federal government, under the leadership of Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann, aims to amend the law against child pornography to reduce the minimum sentence for distribution, acquisition, and possession from one to three to six months. This move is to protect individuals who unintentionally come across such content, such as a mother forwarding it to warn others, from facing a one-year prison sentence. Despite this reduction, the maximum penalty of up to ten years for individuals involved in producing, profiting from, or taking pleasure in child pornography remains unchanged.
Source: www.dpa.com
