Justice orders former red-light figure to serve sentence in men’s prison

A former figure in Vienna’s red-light scene must serve a 32-month prison term in a men’s prison, ORF reports. Waltraud P., 61, was finally convicted in Vienna in December of engaging in Nazi activity.

The sentence includes 20 months of unconditional imprisonment and 12 months from an earlier conviction under Austria’s Prohibition Act, which were activated. P., born Walter, has been ordered to report to Josefstadt prison in Vienna within one month of receiving the notice.

P.’s lawyer, Nikolaus Rast, said he had applied for electronically monitored house arrest, arguing that it should be allowed instead of a shared cell given overcrowding in prisons. The application has not yet been decided. Rast said he feared for his client’s physical safety in a men’s prison.

Rast said P. met all legal requirements to change her registered gender to female. But questions about whether she is transgender are due to be examined at a hearing at the Vienna Provincial Administrative Court on November 3.

P. changed her legal gender in 2023, after a fraud conviction and before she was due to begin serving a sentence. She submitted an expert report about her claimed transgender identity. In Austria, a person must show that they have been living stably as another gender before changing their legal gender.

The latest conviction relates to WhatsApp messages sent between 2015 and 2023 under the name Walter P. They included images of Adolf Hitler and accompanying texts and comments that glorified Hitler and National Socialism, as well as antisemitic messages that mocked and endorsed the mass murder of Jews and other crimes of the Nazi regime.

The Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, an archive, has known P. for some time because of contacts with leading figures in Austria’s neo-Nazi scene.