In the time that the officer was not around, the man engaged Marah in a chat. It was just about the magazine and the building.
Marah had sufficient basis to criticize other countries in the area of sexual offenses. Last year, there were just 4.2 cases of rape per 100,000 inhabitants in Baele and only 15 convictions in cases of sexual abuse of children and that was nationwide out of a population of 170 million. This was so incredibly far removed from the rest of the world that people abroad were certain that the figures must be falsified. This assumption was also supported by a number of other factors.
For example, there was no street lighting in Rosenberg apart from the town center and the main streets. Often there were only the lights of the houses and stores. The shadows of hedges and trees lay in almost every street and on every roof. All the parks were also without light at night. The only thing you could always see were illuminated billboards with half-naked men and women. They were almost everywhere. In many streets was a dimly lit emergency system. Basically, it was a pole with buttons that you could press to call for help in various emergencies. Regardless of the time of day, the waiting time was rarely longer than five minutes. Such fast emergency systems were probably one of the reasons for the generally low crime rates.
In the center of Rosenberg, it was so safe that you as a woman could lie down drunk in the bushes outside a nightclub to sleep and the likelihood of someone having sex next to you was higher than you being woken up for a request. You got more or less crude sex requests throughout the evening, but as soon as you were no longer approachable, no more. Wherever alcohol was served, there was always a horde of sex workers on the hunt for customers. Some of the most popular nightclubs and bars were directly brothels. If you were a regular customer, the prices were sometimes so low that you probably paid more for your drinks that night. If you were a new customer, you often received free enticing offers. If the professional offer was still too expensive, too complicated or too restrictive, you could easily find one or more people who were looking themselves. No matter what fetish you had, and no matter how repulsive it was, there was definitely a place in Rosenberg where it was already openly advertised at the front door. It was so bad that Reyji no longer went to normal pubs, but only to those that generally did not allow such things.
The accuracy of the number of cases in the area of sexual abuse of children appeared to be the most unrealistic. Although child pornography was illegal, it was not actively prosecuted. Unless you happened to be searched for something else, there was not really any risk of being caught. It was also very loosely defined what was considered as such. A photo had to show a sexual act with a child for the possession to be punishable. You were allowed to collect and trade everything else as you wished, as long as the pictures had not been taken secretly or had been forced. This was apparently to protect the population. Nude bathing was very popular in Baele. It was almost impossible to take a photo of a beach during the day without photographing a naked child. Because the number of cases was so minimal, the image collectors were ignored.
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In contrast to other countries, there were also many nixes in Baele. If the logic that sex workers kept the number of rape cases low was correct, then an obvious conclusion would be that mermaids kept the number of cases of sexual abuse of children low since their appearance made them practically legal children. In Rosenberg's outskirts was such an establishment. It was a refuge for disgusting people and not a place Reyji even wanted to think about.
In the end, the decisive factor for the low number of cases was probably everything combined with very high penalties, as Professor Doctor Schoppe had said, except that he had intentionally omitted the number of sex workers. As far as the high penalties were concerned, for instance, the sexual abuse of a child before puberty by a trusted person was a breach of a perpetuity clause of the constitution and, as with all perpetuity clauses, this one already had a penalty. The violation was automatically treason against the people (German: Volksverrat) and thus the maximum penalty, which was the death penalty. However, Marah had suspended it after the last executions five years ago and thus reduced the maximum sentence to life imprisonment. Nevertheless, she could reintroduce it at any time and thus increase all old sentences without a retrial. So it was not necessarily more merciful. The prison was perhaps just a waiting room. In contrast to that, a sexual relationship with a child in puberty by an outside older person was initially exempt from punishment and that regardless of the age difference. Such a crime was not prosecuted by the state, but first had to be reported by the younger person or the parents. The verdict was later a purely individual decision depending on a psychological assessment. With such a hard line, Baele was probably unique in the world.
Marah had tricked the man earlier. Her relationship with Ms. Sucher was not distant. She had just made it sound that way. Marah had known Ms. Sucher since she herself was 10 years old. Ms. Sucher was like a mother to her and Marah was the daughter who rarely reached out to her. Perhaps the relationship was rather distant after all... In any case, it was not true that Marah was not involved in Ms. Sucher's plans. Mrs. Sucher had explained her everything she was going to do down to the smallest detail.
Marah had probably already known that the business was already registered. Reyji was not sure, but she had known Marah long enough that she was sure of it. Marah bought things half the day, but someone could immediately link this one building to an acquaintance of hers, because the building had been a brothel before it closed last year and the acquaintance had registered a similar business this month? If Marah bought something that people were not supposed to know about, then she did not buy it herself. She had probably arranged for rumors to be spread so that she could talk about it in this interview without having to mention it herself. That was most likely the only reason she had not mentioned this one tax before, so that the topic would not be ignored. She had presumably only done all this to create new rumors that she herself was involved in this nightclub, which would open in the summer in the beautiful building at Goldlaub-Allee 13. It was advertising.
.../ End Part