Merkel media man quits as police probe child pornography links
Prosecutors claim they found incriminating material in politician's apartment
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The Social Democrat Jörg Tauss allegedly sent and received clips of child pornograph
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A senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's government resigned from his political posts yesterday after police said he was under investigation for possessing and distributing child pornography on his mobile phone.
Jörg Tauss, a Social Democrat in the grand coalition, quit as his party's parliamentary media affairs and education spokesman and as the regional party general secretary for Baden-Württemberg state after police raided his Berlin and Karlsruhe offices.
Mr Tauss was stripped of his parliamentary immunity on Thursday when news of the raid broke. He said he had resigned, six months before Germany's general election in September, "to avert damage to my party and my parliamentary group". He has campaigned against online child pornography and said he was "absolutely sure" he could be quickly cleared of the accusations.
Prosecutors rejected Mr Tauss's claims that the investigation was a result of his campaign against child pornography. A prosecutor with knowledge of the case said officers had found incriminating material in Mr Tauss's Berlin apartment which demanded an explanation. "It clearly has no connection with his activities as an MP."
Reports said the investigation had been launched after prosecutors in the northern city of Bremerhaven found Mr Tauss's phone numbers and his Berlin address in the possession of a man already suspected of involvement in child pornography distribution.
It is believed to be the first investigation of a German MP over such an emotive, potentially explosive political issue.
Ute Vogt, the leader of the Social Democrats in Baden-Württemberg, said she assumed Mr Tauss, 55, was innocent but welcomed his resignation. "Given the accusations against him, we respect this move."
Investigators are said to have established that Mr Tauss and the other man contacted each other 23 times on mobile phones. The MP was said to have sent the man a child pornography video clip and received a DVD in return.
Just before his summer recess, Mr Tauss was said to have sent the man a text message and then phone him two days after his holiday ended. Prosecutors refused to confirm the reports.
Mr Tauss pledged to co-operate with investigators: "I have always fought hard for better protection of children and youths on the internet and for a decisive campaign against child pornography," he said on his website.
Mr Tauss recently opposed a proposal to impose a media blackout on websites containing child pornography. He said the suggestion from Ursula von der Leyen, the conservative Family Minister, was "an election gimmick".
Yesterday, he said such government-imposed censorship was symbolic rather than effective. "Instead I have campaigned for greater efforts to be made in tracking down the culprits," he said.
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Comments
Child abuse is out in the world and in the homes of many childrens lives, by stealth. Lets make no mistake,-- its roots are deep, with a persistant social reluctance to acknowlege what is revealed is only the tip of a huge iceberg.
To assert that there is a "persistant social reluctance to acknowlege" the existence of people looking at child porn is to wilfully ignore the enormous publicity given to every case.
In your first message, you suggest that francetta should 'send evidence to the police', if she has it.
In your second, you refer to the 'established line peddled by the police', implying that the police are either incompetent or dishonest, which would clearly make a nonsense of sending evidence to them.
Please either cultivate some courtesy, some consistency, or preferably both.
How do you know that enormous publicity is given to 'every case'? It seems to me that in most 'high-profile' cases (such as the Marc Dutroux case in Belgium) every effort is made to suppress investigation, seemingly to protect the 'high and mighty'.
The only valid criticism I can see of the phrase 'tip of the iceberg' is that it's probably an understatement.
Tauss is a member of the SPD while Merkel is from the CDU. In what universe, pray tell, is Tauss Merkel's 'media man'? Never let the truth get in the way of a good story line?
Not true. As a website techy, I can tell you that ANY website can secure all or part of its content by password and/or ip address. Even Google video makes some of its videos available freely and others via paid subscription.
Sites can also easily omit keyword tags which make them 'invisible' to web searches, so it is almost impossible to say how many of these sites are on the internet. It may be 3000, it may be less, it may be more.
Just not your day - is it?
Tauss is a member of the SPD while Merkel is from the CDU. In what universe, pray tell, is Tauss Merkel's 'media man'? Never let the truth get in the way of a good story line?