CONTENT NOTICE: This article contains graphic descriptions of the sexual abuse and the murder of a girl, as described during the criminal trial. Reader discretion is appreciated.
A man convicted of the brutal murder of a 14-year-old girl may have his sentence reduced as a result of the German federal government’s decision to downgrade the criminal severity of child pornography possession. The convict successfully argued that the portion of his sentence related to producing child pornography should be reconsidered due to the shocking change in the law.
Due to stringent privacy laws in Germany, the identity of the murderer has been concealed by local press, but Reduxx has chosen to reveal his identity as Jan Heiko Pflur, 32.
In September 2023, Pflur was convicted of murdering a 14-year-old schoolgirl and procuring child pornography. At that time, the court not only sentenced him to life imprisonment for the murder, but also declared him to be a particularly serious offender and ordered him to remain in preventive detention after serving the custodial portion of his sentence.
However, following an appeal by Pflur, the Federal Court of Justice overturned the preventive detention order and ordered a partial retrial. Pflur’s appeal was based on a recent change in Germany that effectively decriminalized the possession and procurement of child pornography – reducing it from a felony to a misdemeanor. As a result, Pflur no longer met the threshold for preventative detention, which requires an inmate to have been convicted of two felony crimes.
Pflur’s case is particularly gruesome. Two years ago, he sought out minors on the internet to groom into sexual servitude. After encountering 14-year-old “Ayleen” on social media, he started communicating with her, and, over the course of many months and 7,000 exchanged messages, began to expose her to increasingly sexual discussions and topics.
According to reports from Die Welt, which had access to the investigation files, Pflur offered the girl a “Sugar Daddy” arrangement, and demanded nude photos and videos from her. He set several rules, including that the child should promise him “unconditional and complete obedience in every respect,” and that she would make her body available to him “anytime and anywhere.” He also referred to her as his “property,” and told her that she must “serve” and “obey” him.
Pflur threatened the 14-year-old victim if she did not comply with his demands, claiming he would report her to her parents and get her in trouble, or even kill them.
On the day of the murder, Pflur showed up at Ayleen’s residence and threatened to tell her father about their “relationship” unless she got into his car. Terrified, the girl complied.
After abducting her, Pflur took Ayleen’s phone from her and sent messages to her mother and friends telling them not to worry about her sudden disappearance. He then took her to a forest in Langgöns-Cleeberg where he attempted to rape her and strangled her to death.
Pflur then undressed Ayleen’s body, dragged her body into his car, and drove her to a nearby lake. There, he slid her into the water. Seven days later, Ayleen’s waterlogged corpse was found by police.
During the 2023 trial, the judge spoke of the crime as being “the full extent of horror,” and sentenced Pflur to life imprisonment followed by preventive detention. A life sentence in Germany typically lasts 19 years.
However, due to a change in law, Pflur might now avoid preventive detention altogether and have a right to a release assessment after serving 20 years.
As previously reported by Reduxx, Germany recently lowered the penalties associated with the distribution, acquisition, and possession of child pornography. The offense was downgraded from a felony crime with a minimum sentence of one year to a misdemeanor with a minimum sentence of three months.
The change was claimed to be a response to rare edge cases in which innocent third-party reporters of child pornography could possibly face mandatory penalties for possession. Proponents of the change asserted that it was a positive step towards ensuring the courts had the discretion not to prosecute individuals in such cases. However, it was a broad change that did not specify specific instances or motivations worthy of amnesty.
The shocking legislative decision was first initiated by former Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann of the Free Democratic Party (FDP). The FDP is also responsible for having developed and implemented Germany’s radical Self-Determination Act, giving people the right to change their legal name and sex with no questions asked.
Buschmann has defended the legislative change by arguing that downgrading the crime was a necessary step towards ensuring flexibility in certain cases, such as with “juvenile offenders … [seeking out child pornography] out of naivety, curiosity, adventure-seeking, or the desire to impress.”
Warnfälle bedeutet, dass zB Eltern im Klassenchat ihrer Kinder KiPo bemerken, einen Screenshot fertigen und an Lehrer schicken, um sie zu warnen. Hier liegt nicht das typische Unrecht vor. Trotzdem muss wegen eines Verbrechens verurteilt werden. Das darf nicht sein. 2/2
— Marco Buschmann (@MarcoBuschmann) April 10, 2023
Legal Tribune Online (LTO) reported that Buschmann had been asked by the 16 state justice ministers to draft a bill that would either downgrade child pornography possession to a misdemeanor across the board, or formulate a way to provide discretion on a case-by-case basis. According to LTO, Buschmann “opted explicitly for the first option,” thus downgrading all cases.
The fact that the decision to revise the penalties for the crime did not differentiate based on the intention of potential offenders did not go unnoticed by pro-pedophile activists, who celebrated the news.
Dieter Gieseking, the founder of pro-pedophile activist group Krumme-13 (K13), welcomed the change in the law almost immediately, and condemned politicians for not apologizing to “affected individuals” who were convicted under the previous law.
🚨Germany's Parliament has officially voted to decriminalize the possession of child pornography.
— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) May 21, 2024
The move is being celebrated by a "pedophile rights" activist group which has also called for the age of consent to be dropped to 12.https://t.co/JtUNA4wgZg
Gieseking advised any pedophiles charged with child pornography possession consult their lawyers to suspend any criminal proceedings until the new law came into effect.
In 1996, Gieseking was sentenced to eighteen months, for which he served one year in prison, on charges related to operating a mail order child pornography service from a van. In 2003, Gieseking again appeared in court accused of possession of child sexual abuse materials obtained between July 1999 and January 2001. The pornography was found on Gieseking’s computer after a search of his residence in August 2001. His devices contained a total of 216 image files of naked children, and he was sentenced to eight months in prison.
Gieseking has been lobbying the government for changes to legislation for several years. In 2023, the Bundestag accepted a petition on children’s rights authored by Gieseking which amends Article 6 of the Basic Law to add statements regarding children’s rights, and states that “children should be viewed as legal subjects with their own rights.”
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