A retrial against a German man who was jailed for raping an 11-year-old girl has been ordered and will take place next week because an appeal court judge decided 12 years was too severe.

Electrician Christoph K., aged 46, was given 12 years behind bars and a move to a secure psychiatric clinic afterwards, after he sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl while she was walking in a park.

The incident happened in the Obergiesing district, in the city of Munich, in Germany on 25th June 2019.

But the verdict and sentence in 2021 was later overturned by Germany’s highest court of civil and criminal jurisdiction – the Federal Court of Justice – because the sentence was reportedly too severe.

His lawyer Adam Ahmed has now confirmed that a total of 10 dates have been set aside for the retrial to take place between 14th March and 19th April.

The 46-year-old offender was found guilty of dragging the girl from a park a few hundred metres from her parents’ house in the Obergiesing borough of Munich into a bush in broad daylight.

He was reportedly wearing a creepy wolf mask and white gloves when he approached the girl from behind and covered her mouth as he raped her.

The girl later reported the horrific abuse to the police and said the rapist threatened her and her family with death if she told anyone about it.

The police were able to locate the rapist after they found the wolf mask he had disposed of in a bin near his home and he was apprehended two days later at his workplace.

He later confessed to the crime after his DNA was found at the scene and on the victim’s clothes, and he was placed in a closed ward in a psychiatric clinic until the beginning of his trial.

Reports confirmed that Christoph K. had been conditionally released earlier from a previous prison sentence for another sex offence and was a repeat offender with other crimes involving children.

At the time of the crime, he was regarded as a low-risk prisoner and had been allowed to drive unsupervised between his accommodation and work, and while on the way, had attacked the child.

Munich District Court I had sentenced him to 12 years in prison, followed by an indefinite period in a closed psychiatric ward following his conviction for the attack in the wolf mask.

But the Federal Court of Justice in the city of Karlsruhe overturned the verdict later, reasoning that the prison sentence was set too high considering the time he would have to spend in the psychiatric ward.

The guilty verdict remains, but the process will still need to be repeated in order to decide the new sentence.