Aargau’s first reflex was paperwork, not protection

The criminal file is grim enough on its own. A former Aargau SVP cantonal parliamentarian, now 57, is accused by the state prosecutor of repeatedly drugging and sexually assaulting his former partner, her underage daughter and another woman. The indictment includes attempted murder, rape and sexual acts with children, each allegedly committed several times, and the prosecution is seeking life imprisonment. He has been in pre-trial detention since autumn 2023 and remains presumed innocent, as law and habit require us to say before the machinery of justice finishes its slow grind.

What has angered people beyond the courtroom is the second story running alongside the first: the treatment of the women once the case came to light. According to the reports, the victims were not met with obvious protection but with migration scrutiny. That is a distinctly Swiss sort of reflex — efficient, rule-bound and, when the moment demands judgement, rather thin on mercy.

The background is awkwardly banal. The mother met the man while on holiday, entered into a relationship with him and was hired by him as a housekeeper under a work contract, which gave her a residence permit. When he was arrested in autumn 2023, she lost her job. She and her daughter then turned to the social welfare office in Untersiggenthal. Instead of ordinary social assistance, they received emergency aid, and the commune also reported them to the migration office. Since the loss of work can trigger a review of residence status, suspicion of sham employment now hangs over them, with expulsion from Switzerland as a possible outcome.

Their lawyers say the authorities chose the harshest interpretation available. Oskar Gysler, who represents the mother, says there is no clear evidence that the job was fictitious. Tamara de Caro, who represents the daughter, argues that two women who had suffered sexual violence should have been helped first, not immediately asked whether they still had a right to stay in the country. She also says the case was sensitive enough to require closer communication between the authorities, something that appears to have been lacking.

That criticism lands because it fits a broader pattern: each office seems to have reached for the more restrictive option, as if caution were a virtue in itself. De Caro says the migration office could have granted a hardship permit, while the social welfare authority could have paid ordinary assistance. Instead, both opted for the narrower route. The result is predictable enough to be depressing: victims are treated as administrative risks before they are treated as people.

The Aargau government is pushing back. Dieter Egli, the responsible cantonal councillor, says he understands the outrage and is himself shaken. But he insists the migration office did not yet have the information it has today when it made its decision, and that the case continues to be examined, not only since the media coverage began. He also says the authorities are looking into whether too little information was exchanged internally. At present, he says, he has no indication of what went wrong, but he takes the accusation seriously.

Untersiggenthal says in writing that it cannot comment retrospectively on the individual case because of official secrecy, personality rights and proceedings that are still pending. Egli also defends the commune: under cantonal law and political will, municipalities must report foreigners who receive social assistance to the migration office. In other words, the commune did what the system told it to do.

And there, in miniature, lies the problem. A state can always explain itself after the fact. It can point to rules, procedures and pending reviews. What it cannot so easily explain is why, in a case involving alleged repeated sexual violence, the first institutional instinct was to check residence status rather than secure support. Switzerland likes to think of itself as fair, precise and humane. Sometimes it looks more like a country that trusts forms more than people.

Written by Freya Stensrud freya.stensrud@alpineweekly.com