After a holiday camp, the DLRG filed a criminal complaint against the expedition leader and supervisor. He is said to have sexually harassed participants and supervisors. Now the Cologne police are hearing witnesses. “We do everything to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again,” emphasizes the DLRG President.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the Cologne police are investigating sexual harassment against a supervisor of a holiday camp run by the German Life Saving Society (DLRG) last summer. The public prosecutor’s office was “not yet concerned with the facts,” said Cologne’s chief public prosecutor Ulrich Bremer. After a criminal complaint was filed by the DLRG with the Cologne police, however, investigations were started there “due to suspicion of sexual harassment”. According to his information, witnesses are currently being questioned, Bremer continued.
The association has not yet received any feedback from the police on the investigation, said DLRG President Ute Vogt. A corresponding report was made immediately after the case became known. The supervisor then resigned from the chairmanship of the DLRG local group “Cologne on the right bank of the Rhine,” which the accused had held to date. In doing so, he forestalled a suspension. The allegations are directed against a DLRG supervisor of a children’s and youth camp of the lifeguard association last July in Spain.
The DLRG reacted immediately on its homepage with a statement. The holiday camp with a total of 14 children and young people between the ages of 11 and 15 was canceled on August 1 after participants and two supervisors had accused the supervisor and expedition leader of “abusiveness and sexual harassment”.
When the group returned from Spain, the DLRG filed a complaint against the supervisor, against whom there had been initial allegations in this direction in 2019. Vogt called it a “bad story”. All DLRG state associations are interested in learning from the work-up. There was a “jerk” at all levels: “We’re doing everything we can to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again.”