Professor hits PhD student with bamboo stick

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He hit. With a bamboo stick or hand on bare buttocks. At the University of Göttingen in Germany, three women went through hell because of a professor (58). He called his victims to his office, locked the door and put the key in his pocket. They were forced and humiliated.

The man was sentenced almost a year ago by the court of Göttingen to an eleven-month suspended sentence for, among other things, dangerous bodily harm while in office, coercion and deprivation of liberty. In the eyes of those affected and the public prosecutor’s office, the verdict was too lenient. Because: Only in one of the three cases should it have been coercion. And indeed: the court of Göttingen must again decide on the sentence. The sixth criminal chamber of the Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) in Leipzig decided this on Wednesday, the BGH in Karlsruhe announced.

Consequences not expressly announced

According to the regional court, the professor ordered the woman to come to his office outside working hours because of alleged meeting arrangements. He locked the door and told the PhD student to punish her with beatings for alleged misconduct.

The woman allegedly refused at first, after which the Defendant allegedly threatened her that he would no longer supervise her dissertation. In two cases, however, the professor would not have explicitly announced this consequence, so that the professor’s defense could argue that there was no question of criminal coercion. In these cases, the BGH found legal errors in the Göttingen judgment.

“When you read the verdict for the first time, it is striking that the district court was extremely lenient towards the professor,” the federal prosecutor’s office said at the hearing on Wednesday, NDR reports. The regional court saw no criminal coercion, but did not consider a threat that could arise from the professor’s conduct, it said. Now a criminal court in Göttingen still has to negotiate, which also pronounces a new overall sentence.

Uni tries to get rid of Professor

The process is now investigating whether the 58-year-old’s behavior did not lead to a threat. If criminal coercion is established, a new and possibly more severe punishment will follow. “Whether the total sentence will be affected by the new procedure is in any case questionable,” said Susanne Frangenberg, the professor’s lawyer, on Wednesday. For the plaintiff and the other two women involved, the long legal process is very stressful.

“We maintain the disciplinary action to remove the professor from office, which we submitted in 2018, unchanged,” said the University of Göttingen. This procedure is currently suspended at the Administrative Court of Göttingen. If the professor is sentenced to more than one year in prison, the proceedings will be stopped and the professor’s license will be automatically revoked. However, the decision on a more severe sentence will soon be in the hands of another chamber of the court. (lia)

Source: Blick