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State Parliament demands: More powers against child abuse in MV!
The Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state parliament is calling for more investigative powers to protect children from sexual abuse.
State Parliament demands: More powers against child abuse in MV!
An explosive topic is currently being hotly debated in the state parliament in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: the demand for easier investigative powers for the police to combat child abuse. The initiative aims to improve the protection of children from sexual violence by reforming the Federal Registration Act. In particular, the MPs from the SPD and Left government factions, supported by the Greens and the AfD, are committed to this, while the CDU and FDP are holding back with concerns about the content. n-tv reports that this change in the law should enable automated querying of children's personal registration data, but only if there is a specific suspicion of danger.
The urgency of this measure becomes particularly clear when you look at the alarming figures. According to the 2024 police crime statistics, 302 cases of child sexual abuse were registered in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Although this is 18 fewer cases than last year, the number remains worryingly high. In addition, the number of unreported cases is estimated to be significantly higher, which illustrates the scale of the problem. Furthermore, the rise of child pornography online is another alarming sign. So reported Northern Courier of several cases in which investigators come across information about serious crimes in Internet forums, for which often only fragmented data is available. These limit the investigators considerably.
Children in the danger zone
Martina Tegtmeier, the domestic policy spokeswoman for the SPD parliamentary group, emphasizes that the existing regulations make investigative work considerably more difficult and therefore do not offer the children the necessary protection. The data on potential perpetrators is often fragmented and is not sufficient for targeted queries at the residents' registration offices. Tegtmeier demands that the state should not stand idly by when children are in danger. The positive aspect of this reform could result in a higher success rate in identifying perpetrators - even if only poor personal data is available. A look at the nationwide numbers shows that a remarkable 15,520 cases of child sexual abuse were recorded by the police in 2022.
But how exactly are these measures ultimately implemented? The joint proposal from the SPD and the Left is to be submitted to the state parliament on Friday. The aim is to make the investigators' everyday work easier and at the same time improve prevention against children at latent risk. However, to achieve deeper change, greater efforts are needed at the federal level - an aspect that is urgently addressed by MPs.
Overall, it is to be hoped that the reform of the Federal Registration Act will be pushed forward quickly in order to better protect children from sexual violence. It is up to society to act actively and take the necessary steps to change this disastrous situation.