Underage girls in Austria are reportedly being approached by men of Arab descent who offer them drugs and promise more in Vienna, it has been claimed, after authorities revealed the death of another 16-year-old girl in a Viennese hotel room.
As reported by Heute, investigators have concluded that the victim likely died from a drug overdose after she was discovered in a hotel near Vienna’s Stadthalle on Oct. 31 last year. Information regarding the death was only released on Thursday.
According to Austrian broadcaster ORF, sexual exploitation by a migrant gang is among the scenarios being examined by investigators.
Heute reports that seven minors under the age of 18 who were under the supervision of child and youth services died in Vienna in 2025 as a result of drug use. Many of those affected are girls from unstable family environments or living in foster or group care.
Incidents are not limited to the Austrian capital, with Salzburg also reportedly a breeding ground for gangs preying on vulnerable young girls who are plied with drugs and alcohol, and exploited.
Belinda Plattner, head of child and adolescent psychiatry in Salzburg, told ORF that the scale of youth drug consumption has sharply increased. “We are currently seeing significantly more young people who use drugs. At least in Salzburg, this has never been the case to this extent before,” she said.
She told the broadcaster’s ZIB2 news program, “Girls have no value in this male-dominated society – they are worthless girls who can be easily manipulated. They are devalued – at the same time, they are lured to be taken into these apartments. And then, as they told me, sexual assaults repeatedly occur.”
Plattner described how girls aged 14 to 16 are deliberately targeted, particularly around Salzburg’s main train station. “The girls say that they are approached at Salzburg’s main train station by young men of Arab descent who offer them drugs and promise them even more drugs in Vienna. And many of these girls then go with them.”
Girls are then allegedly offered hard drugs like cocaine and crystal meth — both highly addictive substances — free of charge, and are initially treated with respect and invited to live with foreign men, “but often this leads to sexual abuse and demeaning behavior towards the girls,” Plattner said.
The psychiatrist has filed a formal complaint with Vienna police related to the latest death. The Vienna state police headquarters confirmed that an investigation is underway but said that “for investigative reasons, no further details will be released at this time.”
Concerns have also been raised at the political level. In November, Salzburg Social Affairs Councillor Wolfgang Fürweger of the FPÖ said authorities had gathered multiple indications of criminal activity linked to the exploitation of minors. “We ourselves collected information through the Child and Youth Welfare Office, about half a dozen pieces of evidence. We handed these over to the criminal police at the beginning of December,” he said. “Our clear request is: If you observe such things, don’t remain silent. Inform the authorities. Incredible things are apparently happening right before our eyes.”
Further details about the Vienna death were reported by MeinBezirk. Police said the girl was found dead in a hotel in Vienna’s 15th district and that there is currently no evidence of violent crime. A drug overdose is considered the most likely cause of death. Investigators are examining whether the teenager consumed the drugs alone or with others present, and whether the drug use was connected to a sexual encounter.
The girl lived in a group home operated by Vienna’s Child and Youth Welfare Office, MA 11. On the evening of her death, she did not return to the facility but instead checked into the hotel, where she was found the following day.
Remix News has extensively covered the ongoing grooming scandal in the Austrian capital. The most high-profile case was that of 13-year-old Austria schoolgirl Leonie, who was brutally raped and murdered by three Afghan migrants in June 2021. Her body was discovered by passers-by leaning against a tree next to Viktor-Kaplan-Strasse in the Austrian capital. She was found strangled, with her body dumped in a green strip close to the apartment of one of the attackers in Vienna-Donaustadt.
In December 2022, a Vienna court found the Afghan migrants had plied the victim with ecstasy with the intention of raping her; an autopsy report concluded she died of a drug overdose and asphyxiation.
The main 24-year-old defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment, while two accomplices, aged 19 and 20, were jailed for 19 years and 20 years respectively.
In December last year, a 27-year-old Syrian migrant was convicted of raping a 14-year-old girl who was reported missing by her family. The court heard how the girl had been approached by three Syrian men who took her back to their apartment in the Donaustadt district of the city and plied her with drugs.
In September 2025, ten migrant defendants aged between 16 and 21 faced charges of sexual offenses against a 12-year-old girl who was approached through Snapchat and pressured into sex after refusing. According to prosecutors during the trial, the assaults took place over several months in parks, stairwells, hotel rooms, and private apartments in the city’s Favoriten district. The defendants were controversially acquitted after the court raised doubts about the girl’s testimony. Judges cited inconsistencies, including her initial failure to report coercion, her having presented ID and claiming to be older, and her appearance, which led the court to conclude it was unclear whether the defendants knew she was underage.
In March last year, two Algerian migrants were tried for the brutal assault of two teenage girls, aged 14 and 15, whom they allegedly lured into an abandoned building, drugged, and raped at gunpoint.
The events unfolded during Austria’s national holiday on Oct. 26, 2024 when the suspects approached the teenagers, inviting them to a party. Shortly after midnight, the girls entered a taxi with them, only to be taken to an abandoned office complex in Vienna’s 20th district — an area reportedly used as an illegal asylum shelter and drug den.
The prosecution told the court: “The defendants administered various debilitating substances to the two minors,” a fact later confirmed by blood tests. The victims reported being forced to swallow ecstasy tablets under the threat of death.
The 31-year-old first defendant allegedly raped the 15-year-old, telling her that no one would hear her screams and threatening to kill her if she resisted. Medical examinations later confirmed strangulation marks, bruises, and scratches consistent with her testimony.
Also in Vienna last September, a 27-year-old Afghan was jailed for six and a half years for raping a 17-year-old girl as she walked home from a party. The court found that the victim had been approached by her attacker and asked if she wanted to have sex with him. When she refused, she was placed in a chokehold and dragged behind a parked car, where she was raped by the man while he filmed himself covering her mouth.
In court, the attacker was described as a “well-integrated and law-abiding resident of Austria,” who arrived during the migrant crisis of 2015. The man worked in the hospitality industry and had no previous criminal record.
