The mother of a ten-year-old boy raped in Austrian swimming pool by an Iraqi migrant says she regrets telling her children “migrants need our help.” Her son had to be taken to hospital with injuries sustained in the attack, which the migrant claimed was prompted by a “sexual emergency.”

Speaking to local media, single mother of five Dunja said that she had always taught her children to be hospitable towards migrants as she herself had fled to Austria from Serbia during the civil war of the 1990s, the Daily Mail has reported.

However, when she discovered that her child had been raped by an Iraqi who had excused himself by claiming it was a “sexual emergency”, she regretted teaching her children to be trusting of strangers.

“I couldn’t believe it when I heard that. I come from Serbia, and I spent five years living in a Caritas home together with people from many different nations,” she said.

“You certainly can’t call me a racist, but to try and defend himself in that way is just monstrous. It’s like me saying I’m going to go to a bank tomorrow and rob it because I don’t have enough money for my five children.”

Describing the events of the day of the attack, she recalls that she gave her son three euros to go swimming.

“He was so happy at having the money, and after school went there straight away so I wasn’t expecting him back home immediately.

“Three hours after school finished, I got a phone call from him and he was crying into the phone. I couldn’t understand a word he said, but then somebody came on the phone and told me: ‘Please come straight away, your child has been sexually assaulted.’”

When she arrived at the station and saw her son in floods of tears sitting next to a man in handcuffs wearing swimming trunks, her sister had to hold her back from attacking him there and then, she said. Her son has been crying himself to sleep ever since the attack, she added.

The brutal nature of the attack, which happened in early December, sparked outrage across Europe thanks in part to the Iraqi’s casual attitude to what he had done. He was arrested shortly after the attack as he had remained at the pool to go diving. He later told the police that he knew he was doing wrong, but had been compelled to act by a build-up of sexual energy as he hadn’t had sex in four months.

The incident only came to light last week after it was discussed on social media; police have since said they did not release details of the crime when it happened to protect the child’s identity.

“I know that the physical wounds will heal, but the wounds to his soul may never heal,” Dunja said. “I don’t want the man to be deported, I want him to be jailed because I have heard what they do to child sex attackers in jail.

“I want him to experience everything in jail that child sex attackers can experience from the other convicts. And then I want him deported.”