A screenshot of Bjarke Schultz taken from a youtube.com video he created for his business. The video can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m40mR8RFXH0
VILNIUS — The pretrial case investigation of a prominent Danish businessman Bjarke Schultz, head of the Scandinavian Business Center in Lithuania, accused of raping his daughter‘s 19-year old teacher, finished today in the Vilnius 3rd District Court.
The conclusion of the trial may be months away, but a procedural decision was adopted forbidding Schultz to communicate with his family by phone while in custody.
Besides being a potentially valuable witness in the case, Schultz’s daughter may also be in need of protection from her father. Schultz has been accused of molesting the 6-year-old and used language tutoring for his daughter as a pretext to invite the alleged rape victim to his flat.
The trial has caught the nation’s attention. The case has made countless headlines and online groups have popped up on social networking sites like Facebook demanding the maximum punishment of seven years for Schultz.
Awful Sunday morning spectacle
It was a quiet Pentecost morning on May 23 in Vilnius’ Old Town. Worshipers returning from nearby church noticed a crowd around an apartment building and stopped. Police had surrounded the Klaipėda St. block and firefighters were climbing the ladder to enter the flat’s balcony.
When the apartment’s door finally opened at 3 p.m. a naked man with a towel appeared. Seconds later, a bruised-faced girl ran out and fell on the arms of the rescuers.
Rita A., whose full name has not been revealed, testified that she had been invited to teach Danish at Schultz’s apartment on Saturday. She acquired the necessary skills while living in Denmark for a year and thus eagerly replied to “a language tutor needed” notice posted by Schultz’s wife.
She had given several lessons at the apartment before May 23. This time, the 46-year-old Danish businessman said he would like her to join him and his family for dinner to get to know each other. This did not raise any suspicions, Rita said, as she had so far found the Schultz’s to be very warm and friendly family.
However, soon after arriving Rita discovered Bjarke Schultz was the only other person in the house. Rita claims she was detained, beaten and raped by Schultz until Sunday afternoon, when the police and firefighters arrived after she managed to get a hold of a mobile phone and call her friends that morning.
Authorities’ slow, skeptical response criticized
The incident revealed deficiencies in handling emergency calls in Lithuania. The first call to the emergency number 112 reached the service at 10.32 a.m. but Rita was not rescued until almost four hours later after her friends insisted to authorities that they would pay for the broken doors if the emergency call was fake.
Subsequently, the European Commission initiated infringement proceedings against Lithuania, based on the country’s failure to implement its obligation to provide emergency services. The 112 hotline should be effective in the entire territory of the EU and the maximum sanction for infringement of this mandate is a fine of €1 million.
