Germany has announced plans to reduce the minimum sentence for possessing and spreading child pornography, downgrading the offence from a felony to a misdemeanour.
The current law states that any person who “disseminates child pornographic content or makes it available to the general public” will be charged with a felony and sentenced to a prison term between one and 10 years.
The proposed legislation will reduce the minimum sentence to six months and lessen the charge to a misdemeanour.
Justice Minister Marco Buschmann claimed the downgrade is necessary because a one-year minimum sentence has created “numerous problems in practice.”
“In particular, people who receive such material involuntarily – for example in the context of a WhatsApp parents’ group – risk a minimum sentence of one year,” Buschmann said.
“[The same also applies] in the case of teachers who have discovered child pornographic material on students’ cellphones and have forwarded it to alert the affected parents.”
Justice Buschmann said investigators, courts and state-level justice ministers had pushed for the change, saying it would give the ability to “react flexibly and proportionately to each individual case.”
The new legislation states the downgrade is necessary to deal with “the large portion of young offenders with the necessary flexibility,” as culprits tend to act out of “inexperience, curiosity, thirst for adventure or striving to impress.”
Pro-pedophilia advocacy groups have praised the move, including one group whose founder has been charged multiple times with possession of child pornography.
The Western world suffers yet another blow at the hands of moral relativists who exchanged the immutable law of God as a basis of civil justice for the arbitrary whim of those with power and influence. And who will suffer for it most, but the innocent?
Western nations the world over must begin the process of long and thorough self-examination before we reach the point of absolute no-return. The trajectory we’re now on is unsustainable. The authorities have been handed morally unrestrained power, and with no God over government, they’ve also been given the liberty to redefine evil and pardon the unpardonable.
