The German parliament officially approved a bill to decriminalize the distribution and possession of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) by reducing the minimum sentence and reclassifying the felony as a misdemeanor, reports feminist news site Reduxx.
The bill adopted in the Bundestag basically reverses a 2021 decision that finally classified the possession of child pornography as a crime, carrying a minimum one-year custodial sentence in Germany, conforming to EU directives.
The new rules, however, go even further than the pre-2021 situation. Not only will the possession of child pornography be classified as a misdemeanor, but its distribution as well.
The bill states that “possession and acquisition should be punishable with a minimum penalty of three months’ imprisonment, and distribution with a minimum penalty of six months’ imprisonment. The offenses … are therefore classified as misdemeanors and not crimes.”
In addition to its domestic implications, the bill directly violates a European Union directive that classifies possessing any CSAM as a serious criminal offense.
The government’s rationale for downgrading crimes linked to child sexual abuse material to misdemeanors sounds pragmatic: those who are suspected of possession and distribution often turn out to be teenagers themselves. Moreover, they sometimes also accidentally implicate their parents and teachers who find CSAM on teens’ mobile devices phones before sharing it with other parents or with school boards, to notify them of the problem.
Therefore, the bill argues that the downgrade to a misdemeanor was “urgently required in order to be able to respond appropriately and with the necessary flexibility to the large proportion of juvenile offenders” who act “out of a drive typical of the adolescent stage of development.”
The opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) published a statement denouncing the “blanket reduction of penalty range,” saying that distribution, possession, and acquisition of child pornography “must, in principle, remain classified as crimes” and that the problematic cases the bill refers to must be addressed separately and more directly.
On the other side of the aisle, the move is celebrated by pro-pedophilia activist groups such as the Krumme-13 (or K13), which identifies as a “self-help” organization for “pedosexuals.”
While welcoming the change, K13 founder Dietrich Gieseking—who in the past has been repeatedly charged both with possessing and distributing child pornography—criticized the government for not apologizing “to the thousands upon thousands of those affected who fell victim” to the 2021 law making child porn possession a felony.
Gieseking, this self-proclaimed champion of the innocent, was first charged with a CSAM-related crime in 1996 for operating a mail-order child porn service from his van. In 2003, he was charged again for having hundreds of child porn files on his computer—as well as linking to a CSAM distribution website from his personal blog—and sentenced to eight months in prison. In a 2014 interview, Gieseking called for lowering the age of consent to 12 because allowing kids to have a “friendly and sexual relationship with a pedosexual … is long overdue in today’s enlightened society.”
“The taboo of pedophilia must finally be broken at all levels of society. If a pedophile can come out without fear of exclusion or even demonization, then this is the best prevention against child abuse,” Gieseking said in the interview.
Not for the first time, Germany’s socialist-green government appears to be increasingly susceptible to lobbying from K-13 and a dozen or more similar activist groups.
The new law was foreshadowed in 2023, when the Bundestag accepted a petition authored by Gieseking which proposed an amendment to Article 6 of the Basic Law entailing children’s rights. Gieseking’s assertion stipulated that children should “have a say in all matters that affect their emotional, mental, and physical well-being,” and have “the right to the free development of their personality,” including “sexual self-determination.”
