The pictures of her daughter who had been sexually molested by a migrant, were spreading rapidly on social media, but the police stepped in to stop the mother’s search for the perpetrator.
The case of alleged sexual harassment of a young girl in a train in the Rhine Valley caused a major stir on social media on Sunday and Monday after the mother posted a private search request on Facebook.
According to the parent, her 12-year-old daughter was on a train from Freiburg to Schliengen around noon when she was sexually harassed by a stranger.
Attached to her post were several pictures showing a dark-skinned man in a seat in the large compartment of the regional train. “Who knows this man?” the mother wanted to know.
Details of what exactly happened were not provided. Within a short time the entry attracted an enormous response. By Monday morning, it had already been shared 8 000 times, and by noon the 10 000 mark had been exceeded.
But a spokesman for the Federal Police confirmed to a regional German newspaper, the Badische Zeitung, that the incident had been reported and people had taken note of the matter.
The police did not want to give further information at first, citing fears of hampering the investigation as well as a lack of “victim protection”. On Monday afternoon, the police in Freiburg published a Facebook entry with a heavily pixelated and edited version of the original post, accompanied by the message: “Not this way!”
From the new pixelated police photo it is obviously a black man, but it could be any black man.
The police said: “We point out that the publication of portrait photos without the consent of the depicted person, is a criminal offense and will be prosecuted by the police.
The public search on the Internet including photos of the wanted is incumbent on the police and prosecutors and remains a decision of a court. Thus sharing a contribution may already be considered publishing such material.”
The mother’s original post is no longer available.