**The perpetrator’s perfidious tactic**
Jonathan is twelve, his boyfriend is twenty-seven. Some truly awful things came to mind. My first reaction was actually to go to the toilet and throw up. The two of them go out together. They go to the swimming pool, they go shopping, and they even stay overnight in hotels, without anyone noticing the true nature of their relationship.
“And during the day it was: ‘Hey, I’ll give you what you want. We’ll do what you want, and we’ll have a good time together. But in the evenings you also have your duties to fulfill, because it’s a give and take.'”
Until the perpetrator makes a mistake. At the age of twelve, Jonathan Drefs meets a boy in an online chat.
At least, he thinks the other person is sixteen. Only after they’ve been messaging each other for days does it turn out that the other profile belongs to a grown man. But that doesn’t deter Jonathan at this point, and he meets the man.
This film deals with sexual violence against children and young people. Jonathan tells us about his experiences himself, and we sometimes speak very explicitly about what happened between him and the perpetrator. It also deals with the sexual acts.
If this makes you uncomfortable, it’s best not to watch any further.
Jonathan is now an adult. We meet him for an interview at the WDR studio in Siegen, where he lives today.
“Okay Jonathan, let’s start at the very beginning. At the beginning of 2020 you met someone. What was that like?”
“I think that was completely new for me. It was generally a time when I had to adapt to many things.”
“We had just moved, new school, new friends, and for me it was also an emotionally challenging situation because I realized that I might not be attracted to girls, but rather tend towards homosexuality. But I had just come from a village with 500 inhabitants and didn’t know what to do about it.”
“I did have the Discord platform, though, because I used to play with friends, that’s what it was about, and there I discovered that there are also dedicated community servers for the entire LGBTQIA+ community. And I thought, okay, I can take a look and see what’s going on. Just to get to know the whole scene a little bit. And without introducing myself anywhere – I think that’s very important – I was drawn in.”
“I emphasized that I had contacted someone, and that was this notorious person who introduced himself to me as Alex.”
“What did you talk about?”
“It was simply a normal conversation, mainly because he presented himself as a contact person, in the sense that I could ask him any question on the subject.”
“And he probably used that as an opportunity to draw me deeper into a conversation, which eventually became more intimate through small questions, like whether I had any siblings or that he had always wanted a little brother, just like I do now, that he would really like to be like a big brother to someone. And so it all intensified a bit, but it definitely became deeper over time.”
The way the relationship between Jonathan and Alex developed is called grooming or cyber-grooming. This means that perpetrators of sexual violence against children deliberately prepare them and gradually establish contact. They often follow a specific pattern.
Perpetrators gain a child’s trust by pretending to be a peer or a trusted confidant. They focus on shared interests, such as online games. Seemingly casually, they ask for the child’s age, photos, or webcam contact. Then they move the communication to private chats or other platforms. The child is silenced, often through threats or blackmail. Finally, the sexual abuse follows.
The victim’s boundaries are gradually crossed with questions about sexual experiences, the exchange of pornographic images, or sexual acts in front of a webcam. In the worst case, this leads to real-life meetings.
“When did you find out that he was much older than you?”
“Shortly before our first meeting. Up until then, we had a lot of contact. We FaceTimed constantly. I’d come home from school, and then we’d FaceTime, sometimes until the next morning. Then, personally, I always get asked the question, or the question that’s asked of me, that you can tell the person is older, and all I can say is… No. I mean, I don’t know what genes he had, but definitely very good ones, which is why he looked so young.”
“He still lives with his mom, so everything was perfectly disguised. And when the topic of meeting first came up, the question was: Okay, you live at home, I live at home, we’re both minors. How is that supposed to work? There are 300 kilometers between us. And then he was: Well, I don’t want to say savior, but we had the advantage that he’s older, that he has a car, that he doesn’t have a problem with it, and that he’s 27, and that’s actually how I found out.”
“And how did the idea for the meeting even come about?”
“Well, I didn’t suggest it, so to speak. We had very close contact, and very importantly, it wasn’t sexual, because I think that abuse very rarely starts that way. It just happened that way. Okay, you understand, then you can actually do that in real life.”
“And the swimming pool was actually the first topic of conversation, because you start thinking, okay, what do we do? And then he suggested it. And then suddenly it was a Saturday when we finally met.”
Jonathan wants to show us where all of this happened back then. He’s taking me to his old home in Hesse.
“Do you still remember how your first meeting went?”
“I was actually standing right in front of the station door and in front of this ramp.”
“Basically, this was the place where I had my very first hug with this person, and then we actually went to the swimming pool together. So, the very first meeting was right here at the train station, where I also went to school every morning.”
“How did you feel?”
“I think I was incredibly excited on the one hand. But I was also very happy, even though on the other hand I had just lied to my mom about where I really was, so she would think I was going to the swimming pool with friends, and I… I actually met up with this 27-year-old man. I think there was a dilemma, but I think that’s where the issue of manipulation comes into play, because it just felt right in that moment, and that’s how it all started.”
“We walked from Dillenburg train station to the swimming pool, and everything was completely normal there. I went in as usual until we got to the changing rooms.”
“This is your first time back here, isn’t it?”
“Yes, actually. I’ve been here occasionally, but this is the first time I’ve really been to the swimming pool.”
“How is it for you?”
“I think I’m privileged that it doesn’t bother me. I mean, I think I’ve processed it very well, but it’s definitely a strange feeling.”
“Why did you choose this meeting point?”
“I think it just sort of happened that way; when you do something like that with friends, going to the swimming pool was probably one of the most normal things you did.”
“And I think, from the perpetrator’s perspective, it’s simply convenient because there… you simply have this opportunity for intimacy, and I think that as a public place, it’s simply one of the easiest places for something like that.”
“We walked there together, and then there was this situation with the changing room, where I wanted to go into a private cubicle, but hey, that’s the same in swimming lessons at school, you go into the changing room together, and in that changing room it finally happened, my first kiss. In the sense that I was pulled close, and he then masturbated with his hand,”
“Because it wasn’t something I was into. I didn’t know how it worked. So basically I was just standing there, and he was using me for his own gratification. And then, when my duty was, let’s say, over, we went swimming normally, like friends or whatever.”
Jonathan is twelve. He has no idea how romantic love and intimacy work, or what feelings are right. That’s why he believes what Alex tells him.
“And the first thing anyone said after it was over was that I should be happy. I’m the first among my friends to have this experience, and they said how wonderful it was and how proud I should be of myself for doing it for him. Which I, of course, believed and was happy about.”
“Well, I don’t find what just happened exciting at all, but it’s good, and I can be proud of it. I still need to get to know it. It’s something that develops. At least that’s what I thought back then.”
Just like Jonathan and Alex, we drove back to Herborn from the swimming pool. Jonathan lived here in the old town, and there’s a guesthouse just a two-minute walk from his house. That’s where he and the perpetrator spent their first night together.
“I had just had my first kiss. What a success! Now we could spend the evening together.”
“Was that how you felt, or was there ever a moment when you thought you wanted to get out of the situation?”
“I think with every sexual act, because every time I thought to myself, what am I doing here? It was just completely, I don’t want to say strange, but I just couldn’t categorize it. It was such a case of, I’m doing this now, and okay.”
“Of course it was nice to receive this attention from someone, but I would say that with every sexual act I had a growing urge to stop immediately, but it was my duty that simply had to be fulfilled.”
“Masturbation became more frequent, I think four or five times in total, and the hotel or guesthouse situation was always completely geared towards sex.”
“During the day it was: ‘Hey, I’ll give you what you want, we’ll do what you want, and we’ll have a nice time together, but in the evening you also have your duties to fulfill, because it’s a give and take,’ in this strange relationship.”
The next time they met, they went to Frankfurt. First in the city, then they went to the hotel.
“I went upstairs, entered the room, and it was already completely dark. So in the end, I didn’t really know where I was. It was my first time in Frankfurt. I had no idea where I was. And during this encounter, there was the usual masturbation that I was already familiar with, but also oral sex.”
“And I always said that I absolutely didn’t want that, because for me the penis had one function, and that was to empty the bladder and nothing else. I couldn’t imagine anything else. But it was more that this wasn’t completely accepted, in the sense of things like putting my head on his thigh or something like that during masturbation, until my head was taken and it ended with oral sex.”
“So I didn’t resist, which is very important. I didn’t do anything against it, that’s true. But he knew that I had said no, and I had been saying that the whole time. I didn’t want it. I’ve moved away now, but I don’t think a twelve-year-old can ultimately take on a twenty-seven-year-old.”
“And for me in that situation, the biggest thing was probably: I can’t leave. I’m in a strange city. I’m over an hour away from home. I have no idea where I am. So I have two options: I stay here or I go to some strange city and don’t know what I’ll do with it. I stayed here, and I have to say, I think that was the first time I really doubted things, I really said, okay, is all of this even right? Are my boundaries really being respected the way I want them to be?”
“The next morning the blinds went up.”
“We were at this port. I didn’t know Frankfurt had a port, maybe that’s relevant. So I was completely overwhelmed by where we were. I was driven to the train station, went home, and arrived at the station just in time for the token bus. I wondered when I would get home and walked home.”
Alex and Jonathan met three times in February and March. They also spent the night together, and in total there were ten criminal sexual acts between them. They were in constant contact between meetings.
They chatted, they exchanged photos, including nude pictures, and in the end, Jonathan had 600 FaceTime calls in his call log. A fourth meeting had already been arranged, but then everything changed.
It was Jonathan’s mother, Sandra, who prevented this fourth meeting. In April 2020, she learned of Jonathan’s acquaintance and immediately suspected that something was wrong.
“Jonathan was visiting his father, it was the school holidays, and then one evening I received a notification, a WhatsApp message: ‘Mom, I have to tell you something. I’ve met someone.'”
“Now I have to say that Jonathan had told me a few weeks earlier that he had, so to speak, come out, which I mean, you don’t really have to come out these days, but he told me that he thinks or knows that he’s into guys and that he’s met someone. And at first I was absolutely thrilled because I said, my God, so young and then this infatuation comes along and that he tells me that, I think that’s absolutely wonderful.”
“‘Yes, but this man is older than me.’ I thought, well, okay, how old could he be then? Jonathan was twelve. Now I thought fourteen, fifteen maybe. And then he said he was twenty-seven. And at that moment all the alarm bells went off in my head. I said, that can’t be. ‘Yes, but we met, and he’s twenty-seven, and age doesn’t matter.’ Some really horrible things came to mind.”
“My first reaction was actually to go to the toilet and throw up because, let’s say, as a mom you immediately imagine terrible images of the worst possible scenarios, but then I pulled myself together for a moment and pretended to be happy for him. I texted back that I was really happy for him and asked who he was and how they met.”
“But then the WhatsApp messages started coming in immediately. ‘Yes, Alex said we should tell you so he can meet you too.’ ‘He wants to meet you too.’ And again, it hit me hard inside because I just thought, why is this person doing this? It’s pure manipulation, because how would a normal person, let’s say, react impulsively out of emotion? Everyone would probably say to me, ‘Are you crazy? What are you doing?’ But I just said, ‘Why is this person doing this? If I get upset now, this person will have my child right there.’ ‘Because everyone is against us.’”
“‘Everyone is against us. You see, not just the outside world because we’re homosexual, but even your parents, your mother is against us. Then it makes much more sense if we build our own little world here.’ Then he had it right there.”
“But this time I reacted completely differently. And I don’t think he expected that.”
When Jonathan arrives home, Sandra confiscates his mobile phone and laptop. She wants to know exactly what’s going on.
“Was there an argument between the two of you?”
“Not at all. Not at all. When I think about it, there were no loud arguments, no shouting, yelling or crying on his part, nothing at all.”
“He accepted it, and I think deep down he already knew it was a liberating measure. Of course, I told him it wasn’t right because the age difference was simply too great, and that he couldn’t and wouldn’t understand that at that time, and that’s perfectly fine. But what happened here, we have to report to the police.”
“You went to the police relatively quickly, didn’t you?”
“I have a diary entry from you that you gave me, from this very situation, and I would like to read it to you.”
“And then we’ll just talk about it again.”
“Today we were at the criminal investigation department, where I also had to hand over my mobile phone and my Mac. My interrogation is tomorrow in Giessen. Unfortunately, I have no way to cancel it. I don’t feel ready to testify. He’s a great person who isn’t being punished for anything. I don’t think that’s fair.”
“You wrote that back then in that situation. What do you think about it now?”
“I think that shows my convictions at that time very, very strongly, and what I was indoctrinated with for weeks or sold as reality. I think that illustrates it very well.”
“And in the statement that followed, I said what we had discussed beforehand. I was prepared for the situation.”
“And I simply tried to say only enough to make it clear that we were talking about sexual intercourse, and not to go too far, so that neither I would have problems with the youth welfare office and other things, but also so that he wouldn’t have any problems.”
What Jonathan doesn’t realize at this point is that Alex is already being investigated in other locations because he is not the only boy the perpetrator had contact with.
As early as spring and summer 2016, the perpetrator met several times with two boys, aged twelve and thirteen, in Saarbrücken and Stuttgart. A girl was also present on one occasion. He showed them pornographic anime films, and sexual assaults, including oral and anal sex, occurred.
A thirteen-year-old boy from Karlsruhe testifies that Alex contacted him in a chat at the beginning of 2019.
The perpetrator also sent this boy pornographic images and told him about sexual encounters with other thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds. The boy then broke off contact and confided in a friend, who in turn informed the police.
In October 2020, Jonathan also decides to tell the police the whole story.
“What had changed for you six months later that made you want to expand your statement?”
“Because I’ve become much more aware that, okay, what happened wasn’t right.”
“It also wasn’t right that we didn’t communicate honestly and covered for him, so I simply made a second statement in which I told everything completely, and that’s when the police investigation really began or gained momentum. Before that, I think it was more of a file that was just lying around, but then it became child abuse and child pornography, and I think that’s when it really started, also on the part of the police.”
The video recordings of Jonathan’s statements later become a key piece of evidence in court.
“And when did you first truly grasp the full extent?”
“I only found out everything on the day of the trial. On the day of the trial, Jonathan’s video recordings were played, and that’s when I really learned everything in detail.”
“That was four years later, because although I knew there were photos, that there had been meetings, that there had been encounters, there were also changes in Jonathan’s behavior, or yes, that he no longer went to the toilet, he no longer showered. He always washed the same clothes, he didn’t wear any of the clothes anymore, but I didn’t question it.”
“I accepted it because I thought, okay, I’m not going to question it now. This isn’t really about my ego, it’s not about my emotions. For months, I sat by his bed every night. But I wasn’t allowed to touch him. I wasn’t allowed to touch him or hug him. He didn’t say anything, but every night I sat by that bed because he was afraid.”
“And that was simply the worst time for me, not being able to hold my child in my arms, because you want that closeness, you want to give love, you want closeness. And of course, I always wondered when that moment would come when he would tell me everything. That was quite exhausting and a difficult time.”
“Did you blame yourself as a mother?”
“Yes, I did, because these meetings took place and I read through my chat histories with Jonathan, but it was so watertight. It was completely watertight. He sent me pictures of train connections, of bus connections, pictures of where he was, but also pictures of where he wasn’t at all.”
“Imagine, my twelve-year-old child was in Frankfurt, but I assumed he was three towns away at a friend’s house. I drove him to his front door, his friend opened the door, his father was also home, and Alex simply picked him up there, and then they drove to Frankfurt.”
“There was a time when I went outside and someone asked me how I was. I burst into tears, turned around, and left because I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was just functioning. Even my parents didn’t know how I was doing for months because I was just functioning, because I didn’t want to confront it. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it, maybe because I was afraid, afraid of the reactions: People have to see this, people have to know. But today I know that no one is to blame except the perpetrator.”
The perpetrator was sentenced to nine years in prison. Jonathan and the other victims will likely have to deal with these experiences for the rest of their lives. But only because they found the courage to speak out about their experiences was the perpetrator ultimately identified and convicted before he could harm any more children.
That’s why this is very important: If you’ve experienced something similar or know someone who seems strange to you, don’t hesitate to speak up. We’ve included links in the information box to organizations you can contact for help and advice.
“Is there anything you would like to say to other affected individuals?”
“On the other hand, I would say, talk about it, because you have the opportunity, you have the right to talk about it, but you are no less valuable if you don’t.”
“There are many victims who are now speaking publicly about it, but please don’t blame yourself if you can’t, if you’re not ready yet and don’t feel ready, because you are stronger than the act, no question, and you can process it. You can continue living your life and you can give visibility to the issue, even without being in the media, but for yourself, if you deal with it openly within your family.”
“I believe this is the most valuable thing, because I would say that you are already more than your story, but you shouldn’t feel bad if you don’t make it public.”
