Austrian actor Florian Teichtmeister gets suspended jail term for child porn
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Austrian actor Florian Teichtmeister arrives at the courtroom in Vienna, for the start of his trial on Sept 5, 2023.
PHOTO: AFP
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VIENNA – A Vienna court sentenced Austrian actor Florian Teichtmeister, star of the award-winning historical film Corsage (2022), to a two-year suspended prison term on Tuesday for possessing and producing a huge stash of child pornography.
Teichtmeister, who played Emperor Franz-Joseph in the movie about Empress Elisabeth of Austria, admitted to having around 76,000 media files of minors.
The judge said Teichtmeister, 43, must also undergo psychiatric treatment to rein in his paedophile tendencies, and banned him from drinking or taking drugs.
The court said that if the actor breaks the conditions, he risks being placed in a centre for mentally ill offenders.
“I sincerely and deeply regret my actions and would like to apologise,” Teichtmeister said before the verdict was pronounced.
Prosecutor Julia Kalmar had requested a prison sentence, insisting that “consumers (of child pornography) determine the market – even if Teichtmeister did not molest a child himself”.
Around 47,000 of the seized files had depictions of minors aged between seven and 14 years, with the remaining showing young people between 14 and 18.
The court heard that the Austrian actor had created collages, made slideshows and video sequences, altering a total of 34,600 files himself.
The regional court was placed under tight security to avoid incidents with demonstrators, Austrian media reported.
Wearing a dark grey suit, Teichtmeister said he now understands the suffering inflicted on children and said that he should have asked for help earlier. He partially obtained the files through the darknet.
Prosecutors had been investigating Teichtmeister since 2021.
Corsage was a box-office hit, with actress Vicky Krieps, who played Empress Elisabeth, taking the Best Performance prize at the Cannes film festival.
The empress, known popularly as Sisi, was one of the most famous women of the 19th century, but her private life was dogged by drama and tragedy.
The film was under consideration for an Academy Award nomination when reports surfaced in mid-January that Teichtmeister had been charged with possessing child pornography.
Increased penalties
In the wake of the charges, Austria’s national theatre, the Burgtheater, announced it had fired the actor.
Austrian public broadcaster ORF – which co-produced Corsage – said it would neither produce nor broadcast films by Teichtmeister pending the outcome of the case.
The charges reverberated across Austrian politics, with State Secretary for Arts and Culture Andrea Mayer ordering an inquiry amid allegations that people in the industry had been aware of Teichtmeister’s criminality but kept silent.
The case prompted Austria’s government to toughen penalties for child pornography, after leading politicians condemned “ridiculously low” punishments.
Penalties for the possession of pornographic depictions of minors are likely to be increased from up to two years in prison to three.
Teichtmeister’s defence hoped his guilty plea and the fact that he has been in psychological treatment for about two years would count in his favour.
His lawyer Rudolf Mayer said that the actor felt immense relief after the verdict, adding that he will “work intensively on himself so that nothing ever happens again”.
Under the proposed new laws, the production of a large number of sexually explicit depictions of minors – especially for distribution – could result in prison sentences of up to 10 years. AFP
