The abuse scandal at a school in Vienna is spreading.

A preliminary report by an internal commission of Viennese education and youth authorities was published this week.

According to this, a teacher who has worked at the middle school since 1996 with a focus on sports has sexually abused dozens of students over the years, sometimes using knockout drops, and photographed or filmed while undressed.

In the meantime, "the existence of 40 victims has been proven," says the report.

But there could be a lot more.

Stephen Lowenstein

Political correspondent based in Vienna.

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The perpetrator took his own life in 2019 after being reported by a former student and investigations were started.

The investigations were then immediately discontinued.

While data and documents were seized from the teacher's home, his belongings at school, including a computer, are believed to have been stowed away.

This is said to have been done by a friend of the teacher, who himself had a criminal record for sexual offenses against minors and was still allowed to work as a basketball coach.

The Commission has sent several so-called factual statements to the public prosecutor.

It is about whether there were accomplices and whether signs and references to what was happening at the school were disregarded in a possibly criminal way.

Advert from 2013 sent

However, it is also completely unclear how a complaint from 2013 was able to get through to the authorities.

She had been asked by a student who had been sexually abused in 2006 as a 13-year-old boy in a holiday resort on Lake Wolfgang by the supervisor at the time, but was only able to bring himself to report it as a young adult.

As the victim's lawyers explain in a letter to the Minister of Justice, which became known to the media, the meager and contradictory information provided by the investigating authorities "confirmed the picture that there were deliberate acts of cover-up in the matter at hand on the part of unknown persons and/or authorities is".

The physical education teacher abused boys in pre-puberty.

He apparently had a reputation at school as a very dedicated and popular teacher.

However, it has now also been proven from witness statements that, in addition to the serious acts of abuse he had secretly committed, he was also openly abusive - be it through abusive behavior and physical punishment such as pulling on the ear, or by having students sit on his lap and stroking them .

According to the report, the current head of the school claims he didn't notice anything, the previous head stated that the teacher had once been forbidden to do this.

The teacher enjoyed great freedom

The picture that emerges from the report and from witness statements is that the teacher enjoyed great freedom.

The room of the class of which he was the "head" (class teacher) was the only one and therefore relatively isolated on the ground floor.

Next door was a former caretaker's apartment.

The teacher, who was called “Ronny” by the students, set it up as a “chill-out area”.

According to the report, he also showered with the students after the sport and took photos.

Part of the apparently consciously cultivated gray area between secrecy and open abuse was that he also encouraged the students to take photographs of one another.

Such pictures of the boys taking a shower, which do not show their private parts, were even printed in a photo book that was given to the students and parents together with the DVD at the end of school.

The fact that the middle school is considered ambitious to promote graduates in the direction of competitive sports could have contributed to the pressure on the students.

Names of well-known footballers adorn the list of graduates.