The Iraqi asylum seeker who raped a 10-year-old boy in a swimming centre in Vienna will have his sentence reduced from six to four years after a judge felt his punishment was too “draconian”.

On the 2nd of December 2015, the 20-year-old Iraqi Amir A. brutally raped a 10-year-old boy at the Theresienbad in Vienna and shocked the country after claiming that he had a “sexual emergency”.

The Iraqi was found guilty of rape and sentenced to six years, but may see freedom much sooner as a judge has now reduced his sentence to four years, meaning he may be free as early as 2019, Kronen Zeitung reports.

Amir A., who came to Austria purely for economic reasons and was found to not have been persecuted in his native Iraq, confessed to the brutal rape. He said he had “not had sex for four months” and that it was an “emergency”.

Roland Kier, the lawyer for the attacker, appealed the initial judgement claiming the sentence had been too “draconian” for the crime and too “excessive”.

The appeal process eventually made it all the way to the Austrian supreme court (OGH). Senate president judge Thomas Philipp agreed with Kier and said the sentence of six years was too much.

Judge Philipp said that “four years is appropriate here” claiming the incident had only happened once and the Iraqi migrant had no other history of sexually abusing children in Austria.

He called the case a “one-time incident” and said it was not a case of “many years of abuse in family circles, with often serious consequences” – indicating he was not sure there would be any lasting effect on the 10-year-old who had been raped.

The judge also said other factors had to be taken into account such as the attacker not being over 21 and the fact he gave a full confession and expressed guilt.

The young victim is said to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the attack. But despite this, there is no longer room for any more appeals as the supreme court decision is final.

The case was only one of a number of sexual attacks that have occurred at swimming pools across Austria and Germany.

The attacks became so frequent that some pools attempted to ban migrants from entering whilst local governments and organisations attempted to create programmes to educate the migrants not to attack young girls and boys.