The appeal brought by a father who was last spring sentenced to 13 years’ imprisonment for sexual abuse and the production of child pornography – including in connection with his own daughter – was heard on Tuesday. He had appealed against the severity of the sentence handed down during his original trial.
The now 60-year-old man, a well-known figure in the Luxembourg theatre scene, said in court on Tuesday that he no longer wished to contest the allegations and had acknowledged his guilt.
He said he was appealing solely on the grounds of the length of the prison term – eight years of the 13-year sentence were suspended, with the first five of those subject to conditions imposed by the court.
During the original verdict, the judges noted that the defendant had expressed his regret for the acts of which he was accused, “yet in doing so he lamented his fate and ‘his illness’, so that his remorse must be viewed with a degree of caution,” they said in summary.
Man sentenced to ten years in prison for sexual abuse of stepdaughter
‘Extreme gravity’ of the offences
The defendant’s lawyer, Maître Maximilien Lehnen, argued that the prison sentence should be suspended entirely, possibly subject to conditions.
As five years had elapsed between the house search and the defendant’s first hearing in July 2020 and the trial in the court of first instance in February 2025, the reasonable time limit had been exceeded, Lehnen said. His client was aware of his guilt, was complying with the conditions, attended psychiatric treatment regularly and had compensated the victims.
However, a representative for the attorney general’s office pointed to the “extreme gravity” of the offences and emphasised that he had seen “little worse” in his career to date.
Although, while he agreed that the reasonable time limit had been exceeded, the attorney general’s representative said that this had already been considered when determining the original sentence at first instance.
The law provides for a prison sentence of between 12 and 35 years for the offences. The sentence imposed at first instance was already at the lower limit, and a prison sentence of 13 years was “not too much” in this case, the attorney general’s representative argued.
He asked the appeal judges to uphold the first-instance judgment, saying that a full suspension of the sentence on probation was out of the question. Instead, he argued in favour of granting a suspension for only half of the sentence.
At the start of the hearing, the judges had turned down a defence request for the appeal proceedings to be held behind closed doors.
The second-instance verdict will be handed down on 12 May. Until a conviction is final, the presumption of innocence applies.
(This article was originally published by the Luxemburger Wort. Machine translated using AI, with editing by Duncan Roberts)
