When government-controlled TV and radio released the details that led straight to his drama and his identity, until then kept away from the media meat grinder, he could no longer stand the pain and took his own life. This is how Mikołaj Filiks died, 15 years old, a young Polish victim of a pedophile. Tvp and Radio Szczecin, two state media, have ended up under accusation, but also the executive led by the right-wing Pis party. According to the opposition, the political attempt to strike the opposition was behind the drama: the arrested pedophile is a member of the Civic Platform, the centre-left coalition which also includes the victim’s mother, MP Magdalena Filiks.
A political affair
The abuses date back to 2020 and the man was convicted in 2021, but the story had remained out of the spotlight until at the end of 2022, journalists close to the government and several Pis politicians, including Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek, began to bring out the case, gradually revealing details that could only be known to the prosecution. The journalistic revelations turned into a real campaign on media and social media, with right-wing politicians and commentators suggesting that the story had been covered up to protect not the victims (including another daughter of MP Filiks). , but the pedophile, Krzysztof F., exponent of Civic Platform, official at the Municipality of Stettin and LGBTQ activist. For the Pis, which makes the battle against LGBTQ rights and so-called gender theories a political banner, the occasion was a tempting one.
“The same people who cry so loudly to the fight against pedophilia hide that there are pedophiles in their ranks”, said minister Czarnek interviewed by TVP, adding that it was a “damage to society” that the case had not been publicly denounced. In reality, as several Polish legal experts have explained, the trial had been kept away from the spotlight to protect the two young boys who were victims of the pedophile. Although the radio station that first reported the case, the government-controlled Radio Szczecin, limited itself to reporting the age of the victims and the fact that they were the children of an opposition MP, without disclosing their names, subsequent posts of the minister and the public echo that the story had easily led to the identification of Magdalena Filiks and the kids. The youngest of whom, Mikołaj, took his own life on February 17, that is, after weeks of media pounding and three years after the abuses.
The mingling of judges, the media and the government
Another serious element of this case was the leak of news: according to the opposition, Radio Szczecin and Minister Czarnek would have had access to information that only the prosecution could provide, among other things in violation of the law. “In this case, no one has agreed to publish data that would allow the identification of the victims. Article 18 of the law on broadcasting establishes that information that would allow the identification of crime victims cannot be transmitted”, explained the judge Olympia Maluszek. So why did the information leak? For Civic Platform, the reason is the mix between political power, state media and judges. The Polish government has long been engaged in a tug of war with the European Union over its laws on justice. The Commission accuses Warsaw of not respecting the independence of judges, controlling their appointments and careers. “The Szczecin prosecutor’s office is a trusted unit of Minister (of Justice, ed.) Zbigniew Ziobro, to whom it sends important cases from the point of view of the party’s interest. Tomasz Duklanowski (the radio journalist who first brought out the affair) is an employee of the pro-government media of Pis and was awarded the Order of Polonia restituta (highest state honor, ed) by (President of the Republic) Andrzej Duda”, says Olimpia Małuszek again.
Donald Tusk, leader of Civic Platform, expressed anger at Mikołaj’s death: “We will make sure that the Pis is held accountable for all evil, for all the human damage and tragedies it has caused since it has been in power”. Party colleague Magdalena Filiks has not yet spoken out on the matter. On Twitter, she only gave the announcement of her son’s death and the date of the funeral: “On behalf of myself and my daughters, Aleksandra and Maja, I ask the ‘media’ to respect the privacy of my family and not to come”, he added.
