A Vienna court last month handed a suspended sentence to a man found guilty of hundreds of neo-nazi offences, along with possession of child sexual abuse material and acts of extreme animal cruelty, after hearing that he sang in church choirs and had successfully completed therapy.

Johannes R., 58, stood trial at Vienna Regional Court on 26 March on charges that the public prosecutor described, with some restraint, as “very gruesome”.

Sexualised torture

Amongst the material distributed by the defendant were photographs and videos depicting killings, rapes, and the torture of adults and children by nazis in a sexualised context, accompanied by dehumanising language including “Jew sow” and “Subhumans”.

Thousands of images constituted child sexual abuse material, with a “strikingly large” number involving toddlers and infants.

The defence presented R.’s crimes as the product of circumstance rather than conviction. The court was told he had worked for years at a luxury Vienna hotel without apparent incident until the pandemic cost him his job.

Dismissal, a relationship breakdown, a brief involvement with a man described as a nazi, and cocaine use were put forward as the chain of events that explained his offending.

The familiar argument that he could not be a nazi because he had once worked alongside foreigners was also deployed.

Mental and sexual disorder

Austrian anti-fascist platform Stoppt die Rechten, which monitored the trial, was sceptical, pointing out that R. had admitted torturing animals since childhood, and that his history of neo-nazi offending appeared to date from 2015, a full five years before the pandemic crisis cited by the defence.

An expert witness confirmed both a mental and sexual disorder but concluded that he bore full criminal responsibility. However, a probation officer declared that R. was an exceptionally rare rehabilitation success. The jury deliberated for 90 minutes before returning unanimous guilty verdicts.

The sentence, 24 months suspended for three years, left the prosecution lawyers stunned into silence.