Threat to publish nude images is a criminal offence

The OLG Hamm has decided that it would constitute a sexual coercion within the meaning of Section 177 of the German Criminal Code (StGB) if a minor were threatened with the publication of nude images on Facebook in order to in turn encourage them to engage in sexual acts.

The accused threatened to post photos that had previously been exchanged via Whatsapp on Facebook and hang them at her school.

In the judgment, the OLG Hamm annulled the landgerichtjudgment, which had previously ruled that the purely threat had not yet taken the steps to the experimental stage. The OLG, as an appellate court, took a different view, since the BGH would consider it sufficient for the trial to begin if it had already been implemented as a feature of the legal fact. This was to be done by the threat in the form of the act of coercion, Paragraph 177(2) No. 5 StGB) was the case, since sexual self-determination as a protective asset of The then still minor schoolgirl was also directly endangered by the threat. The fact that the defendant was not even at home with the minor at the time of the threat was irrelevant to the OLG.