The German sexual predator suspected of the abduction and murder of Madeleine McCann first struck as a teenager when he sexually abused a girl, six, in a playground.
Christian Brückner, now 43, was 17 when he attacked the girl in his hometown of Würzburg in Bavaria in 1993.
A court was told that he ran away when the terrified girl began to cry, and that he later exposed himself in front of a nine-year-old girl. He was charged with “sexual abuse of a child, attempted sexual abuse of a child and sexual acts in front of a child”.
At his trial he was asked by the judge what he thought of his actions and replied: “I didn’t think anything.” A psychiatrist told the court that he required “intensive supervision”.
Details of the offence, which is one of at least 17 on his criminal record in Germany, came as it emerged that Brückner was born Christian Fischer in 1976 but given up by his birth mother and placed in a home in Würzburg and later adopted.
He moved to Braunschweig in central Germany where there were further incidents of sexual coercion of minors, thefts, causing bodily harm, sexual abuse of children and the dissemination of child pornography, in addition to drug offences.
In 2013 he assaulted another child, and in 2016, the Braunschweig district court sentenced him to one year and three months in prison for “sexual abuse of a child with possession of child pornography”.
A year later, he was convicted of assault occasioning bodily harm.
