A former employee of a children’s home run by a children’s charity in Austria has been charged with alleged sexual abuse of minors, the latest revelation to rock the organisation.
Since last year, SOS Children’s Villages Austria has faced several fresh accusations of alleged cases of child abuse at its children’s homes in the country, leading to a probe by prosecutors and a suspension of its director.
Charges filed by prosecutors
In a statement Wednesday, local prosecutors said they have charged a 57-year-old Austrian man who used to work at a SOS Children’s Villages facility in the country’s north with several offences, including aggravated sexual abuse of minors, coercion and abuse of authority.
The assaults are alleged to have been committed by the suspect, who was employed as a “family helper” at a facility in Seekirchen, from 2017 onwards “over a period of three years”, Salzburg public prosecutors said.
READ ALSO: Head of charity suspended following Austrian abuse allegations
Allegations and prior conviction
The defendant is accused of sexually abusing two girls, both minors, placed at the Seekirchen facility “in the form of repeated touching of their breasts and pubic areas”, they added.
Using threats and violence, the man allegedly also coerced one of the girls into remaining silent.
The former employee had already been convicted of sexual abuse of minors in 2021, but at the time of the conviction, he was no longer working at the facility, and the charges now brought against him were not yet known, the statement said.
The statement did not say if the suspect denied the latest charges against him.
If convicted, he could face up to 10 years in prison. No date has yet been set for his court hearing.
Earlier abuse cases
Last year, SOS Children’s Villages Austria announced that it had compensated eight people after they accused its late Austrian founder of sexually abusing and mistreating them.
In 1949, Hermann Gmeiner, together with a group of others, founded the association Societas Socialis, later renamed SOS Kinderdorf, to support orphaned or abandoned children.
The organisation grew quickly and became the Global Federation of SOS Children’s Villages International in 1963, which today has facilities in more than 130 countries around the world.
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