About Jule Stinkesocke

The well-documented Jule Stinkesocke case has deeply moved Germany: How could this happen? To this day, one wonders how a catfish could act on the back of PWD for 15 years. Jule has left her mark and should be a warning to us all: Media literacy is not an innate skill, but must be taught to children and young people. Even if we have a basic trust in social media accounts especially if they appear verified, red flags must not simply be overlooked.

Who is Jule Stinkesocke?

She is young, educated, famous: Jule, the pediatrician in a wheelchair.
She only has one flaw: she doesn't exist. She is a catfish.

A catfish is a person who creates a false online identity or persona, often on social media, to deceive others. This fake identity is used to trick individuals into believing they are interacting with a different person, potentially for the purpose of forming online relationships, gaining their trust, or even swindling them. Catfishers may use emotional manipulation, such as flattery or playing on a victim's vulnerabilities, to gain their trust and control them.

Yes, you're right: 'Stinkesocke' means Stinky Sock and is the name Jule gave herself. It stands for a very unpleasant person. Come with us on a deep dive into the world of an incredible realfake: Jule's world, the so-called Juleverse.

2008-2023

Fate hits ‘Hamborger Deern’ (girl from Hamburg) Julia Gothe hard, but she makes the best of it: over the years, the shy schoolgirl, who remains paraplegic after a serious accident and desperately tries to find her feet in a new life with a disability, becomes a self-confident pediatrician who lives happily with her best friend Marie in her own house on the Baltic Sea and even takes in a disabled foster child - Helena.

Spoiler: It is almost an irony of fate that Helena will end up bringing Jule's world crashing down after 15 years.

Jule does paratriathlon, travels the world and is also a well-known blogger: she writes about all aspects of her life, not just everyday situations, but also about health problems and her sexuality. She has 70,000 followers on Twitter and is therefore very influential, especially during the pandemic. But on April 2, 2023, her world falls apart again.

Jule Stinkesocke (long form: Jules Blog - Aus dem Leben einer Stinkesocke) was the name of a weblog that was exposed as a real fake in 2023. From 2009, it reported on the life of Julia Gothe (born 1992), a Hamburg resident who was allegedly paraplegic after an accident, and her everyday life. After the blog received several awards, it was deleted without notice on April 2, 2023. There had been accusations that the identity was fictitious. The Twitter account with around 69,000 followers went offline two days later.
- Wikipedia

Jule Stinkesocke, as she calls herself, has had many faces over the years: paraplegic student. Award-winning blogger. Testimonial for Aktion Mensch*. Gifted paratriathlete. Exceptional student. Victim of stalking. Popular pediatrician in a wheelchair. Dedicated foster mother of disabled Helena. Kinky bisexual woman. Big Twitter account. Role model. And activist for the disabled.

*Aktion Mensch is the largest private funding organization in Germany and supports social projects for people with and without disabilities.

Which face in her profile pictures belongs to Jule?

Intro

On Christmas Eve 2008, a 16-year-old girl with the username Stinkesocke registers on the internet forum Planet-Liebe. She is in hospital and hopes to find some nice people as she is all alone. Her parents are getting on her nerves because they have no patience and are harassing her - so she just wants to be left alone by them at Christmas. It takes her a few weeks to tell the forum what actually happened to her.

Review: Jule's accident

I'm in hospital because some stupid cow flattened me with her car. It was at a pedestrian crossing and I had the green light.

Stinkesocke's real name is Julia Gothe, she is called Jule, comes from Hamburg-Lurup and survives a serious car accident as a 15-year-old on July 8, 2008: she is hit by a left-turning car and critically injured, and is taken by rescue helicopter to a special clinic. Jule is placed in an induced coma, spends months in intensive care and remains paraplegic.

Still in hospital, she thinks a lot about her future: Where will she live? How will she live? Will she make new friends? Which man will want her? Jule finally breaks away completely from her parents, who are overwhelmed by the situation, and starts a new life with her disability in a wheelchair. Alone. After long months in hospital, she moves straight into a shared flat with other wheelchair users she met at an inclusive sports club, looks for an accessible school and gets her driver's license at the age of 16 so that she can be independent.

In her blog 'On life as a stinky sock', later on Twitter, she writes from 2009 onwards about the difficulties she faces, wheelchair travel in the snow, elevators that don't work, ableism, (failed) relationships, her sport, which brings her out of her worst slump, school, bullying by classmates, later her studies and the path to her dream job: pediatrician. With her concise, entertaining writing style, she creates a world that is so vivid that her readers can imagine not only Jule, but also her numerous friends and the vividly described, often curious situations: the Juleverse.

How long have you been blogging? How did you get around to blogging?
I've been blogging since the beginning of 2009. Long story short: I was in hospital after a severe traffic accident, and after twelve months of medical treatment and rehab I was getting on the nerves of people around me a lot. My self-pity was endless and I my head nearly burst from all sorts of unsorted thoughts. A psychologist advised me on writing them down. I did and began posting them anonymously in a forum. Quickly, I had plenty of regular readers who suggested I write a book. They found my life very interesting and said I could tell stories well. I never wrote a book, but decided to start a blog instead.
What's your blog called and why?
Admittedly, "Aus dem Leben einer Stinkesocke" ["On life as a stinky sock"] isn't a particularly original title. I got my nickname "stinky sock" during my stay at a medical rehab centre. One day while making my bed, the staff couldn't think of anything more motivating than calling me a stinky boot [as in sourpuss]. When I didn't react to that, the nurses started philosophizing about boots not being allowed into bed and I could at most be a stinky sock. As I had cold feet most of the time, one of the nurses shouted: "Here! Indeed. Stinky socks!" She bent over me and smelt my feet. Finally I had to smile and said: "You people are out of your minds. Unbelievable." The nurse took away my dirty laundry and rhymed: "Stinky sock was very ill, now she's smiling, wonderful!" That very moment the ward round entered the room and that was that, I had a nickname. At first I found it really embarrassing, but later I hung a photo of my feet and a sock over my bed.
What are you blogging about? Why?
I blog about everyday life. Complete with all ups and downs. In order to sort my thoughts and to get feedback, but mainly for reading older diary entries on bad days. I like to tell myself: "Look how bad you were then. You'll manage your current problem just fine!"
Who's your target audience?
I have no target group. I'm my blog's own target. 😉
- Interview GIRLS CAN BLOG

Jule becomes famous

Jule publishes her blog in May 2009 at jule-stinkesocke.blogspot.de and has a lot of readers right from the start: she simply takes them from Planet-Liebe and recycles her old forum posts as blog posts back to January 2009. Just 4 months later, in September, 100 to 150 visitors come to her site every day. And back then, personal blogs were still booming: being a blogger was almost like being a journalist.

Jule attracts a large readership with her topics. She writes about quite normal events from her life at school and university, about moving house and club life, but also about bullying, masturbation despite a spinal cord injury and the corresponding aids, her first boyfriend, her first sex, her first heartbreak. She talks about her bladder and bowel paralysis, sexual fetishes from her environment such as neoprene, leggings or tights, about 12-year-old girls from the club who also seek her help with the most intimate problems with their parents. She talks about diaper and poop parties, communal catheterization, snot rockets, uncontrolled farting and vacations on a swinger yacht.

Many of these are aspects that have not been talked about publicly before and so young, disabled girls can easily identify with the ‘outspoken’ Jule. They seek contact with her online, take her as a role model and want to move forward just as courageously: This results in very personal, joint Q&A sessions. However, they never meet in real life.

The media quickly became interested in the unusual young woman: Jule received requests for reports and documentaries and was invited to talk shows. She always turns them down, at first she is too shy, later she is afraid of stalkers. But she expresses herself in writing, in contact with media such as Aktion Mensch also via an intermediary, and raises her voice on the web. In 2019, her blog finally moved to its own domain jule-stinkesocke.de.

Media timeline

Jule's CV

Jule always claims to want to remain anonymous, especially after she is allegedly being followed by ‘stalkers’. She also rejects collaborations of any kind. Nevertheless, you can construct a precise CV from her blog posts and tweets:

Doubts about Jule Stinkesocke

For almost 15 years, Jule Stinkesocke's story has inspired tens of thousands of people who have followed her journey via the blog. In 2023, she lives a mostly peaceful but occasionally slightly turbulent life in a small town with her best friend Marie, who is also in a wheelchair, and their foster child Helena, who has cerebral palsy and diabetes and also uses a wheelchair. Both women work as pediatricians, Helena develops into an excellent para-swimmer despite her disability and attends grammar school, even being allowed to take the sports profile.

Jules' blog comprises 1,120 posts in 2023, but many of them seem strange on closer reading. The detailed description of how Helena came to be fostered, in particular, was already offending foster parents in 2018. And then there are these other blog posts that are no longer simply waved through. Posts about abuse allegations, about masturbating 12-year-olds, disabled girls, controversial topics and strange nightmares. And again and again about older men who are glorified.

For the most part, Jule was always perceived by people as inspiring and motivating, as a “force for inclusion of the disabled”. But over the years, more and more doubts have arisen. Some points are open to attack, others are less credible, be it her successes in paratriathlon, which do not appear in any list of results, her medical studies after the 12th grade without a high school diploma or even Helena, who is disabled and for whom Jule is easily given guardianship.

Helena

Helena, the unloved foster child who was abandoned in a baby hatch, is not only a system crasher, but also ends up bringing the Juleverse crashing down.

In the summer of 2017, Jule and Marie met 11-year-old Helena, who was on vacation with her foster parents and two younger sisters at a lake in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Helena has diabetes and cerebral palsy, which Jule considers to be mild, as she walks barefoot without any aids. Finally, Helena, with armbands, is allowed into the water, where she frolics exuberantly with Jule and Marie. She tells them that she's just a foster child and is treated worse than the biological children.

Since that meeting, Helena has fervently wished to see the two women again, and one year later, her wish comes true when the family returns to the lake for their summer vacation. She sees Jule and Marie upon arriving in the parking lot, immediately runs over, hugs Jule, jumps onto Marie's lap, and hugs her back. Things are going even worse in the foster family.

Jule contacts the local youth welfare office so that Helena can visit over the weekend. After a home visit by the office, Jule and Marie are allowed to pick up Helena from her foster family , about 100 kilometers from Schönberg on the Baltic Sea. The girl stays with them from then on, and in December 2018, Jule and Marie are granted foster care.

Under the influence of Jule and Marie, Helena develops from a disturbed 12-year-old into a gifted para-athlete, copes well with life in a wheelchair as she can walk less and less, and has good school reports. Nevertheless she gets school terms mixed up and sometimes doesn't seem to know in which state she actually attends school. Helena resigns from the riding club although she loves horses because an instructor gets too close to her and is later supposed to be weighed naked by a swimming coach - without Jule ever pressing charges. There are some people on Twitter who are suspicious of this and make background inquiries.

This doesn't detract from Jule's popularity, she simply blocks overly critical questions, and when things get really tight, she sics tens of thousands of followers on the doubters or threatens them with her lawyer. She still lacks the one big piece of evidence that could shake her existence.

April 2, 2023

Yay! @JuleStinkesocke can stand and walk! Oh wait. Is Jule now the Australian Kylie Harris from @abbywinters, or what?

The thread hits Twitter like a bomb: several profile pictures of Jule Stinkesocke are stolen from the Australian porn star Kylie Harris. Further discrepancies, especially in relation to Helena, suggest that she might not even exist. And it soon becomes clear that none of the millions of blog readers and almost 70,000 followers have ever seen Jule or spoken to her on the phone, no facetime. A female doctor in a wheelchair is unknown in Schönberg.

Prizes and awards were never accepted in person, media contacts such as with Aktion Mensch were made via an older man who was also responsible for her imprint for over 10 years and had founded an association together with her: the ‘Bund behinderter Blogger e.V.’.

People know Jule Stinkesocke - but nobody knows Julia Gothe. With one exception: the older man from her imprint.

After this thread, Twitter is on fire: Could it be that Jule is just a catfish? That she - or he - has invented an entire life for 15 years? Her followers wait tensely for a clarifying statement, and get it two days later, in the middle of the night.

If I met someone who made up a life story for 15 years, I would just want to hug this person and listen to him.

Jule's explainations clarify little, but raise all the more questions: Is this merely an apologetic backdoor? A few hours later, not only the statement, but also her blog, her Twitter account and Helena's were deleted without comment. Jule simply disappears, leaving the people who had believed in her at a loss.

What happens next

In early April 2023, an anonymous user on Twitter posted screenshots of Australian porn actress Kylie Harris alongside those of Jules' profile picture with the comment "Yay! @JuleStinkesocke can stand and walk!" One of the pictures of the porn actress is identical to the profile picture except for the color scheme and a reflection. The media picked up on these accusations and found further evidence that the account was fictional. After the allegations became public, the person behind the account addressed her followers in a statement in which she reaffirmed that she was writing about her “real experiences” as a “paraplegic woman”. However, the name is not real, only the “core content of what [the user] writes is real.”
The owner of the web space and also the administrator of the weblog, who acted as an intermediary for the Aktion-Mensch article, is assumed to be the operator of Jule's Twitter accounts and also those of her foster daughter Helena, as well as the weblog. He also operated a Twitter account and very often interacted with the other two Twitter accounts.Individual pictures were also similar, e.g. pictures of a Baltic Sea beach. He had also been the beneficiary of an appeal for donations from Jule for a new car on Twitter. The administrator denied through his lawyers that he had written the content himself, but declined to comment. The alleged author's blog and social media channels have since been deleted or are inaccessible.
- Wikipedia

Media and press immediately jump on the bandwagon, but basically just retell the thread that started it all. Could that be it? After incredible 15 years?

No! We wanted to dig deeper and went in search of Julia Gothe. Only here on Imperial Crimes can you get a closer look at the Juleverse and answer the question: What is real in the life of Jule Stinkesocke? And why is even the public prosecutor's office looking into the Stinkesocke case?

We - five committed women - have been getting to the bottom of the case ever since, more than two years ago, as we quickly realized that Jule did not exist. In May 2023, we filed a criminal complaint against ‘Julia Gothe’, whereupon the public prosecutor's office confirmed to us in November: there is no Julia Gothe, nor is there a Helena. Both are fictional persons with fictional stories. Investigations had already revealed this in 2014 or 2015. This was no longer a surprise to us, as no one has yet been found who knows ‘Jule’ personally in any way or has ever met her.

Disabled women who saw Jule as a role model and exchanged intimate details and photos over the Internet contacted us as soon as they painfully realized that Jule did not exist. As a pediatrician, she was a person of trust, so it seemed quite natural to talk to her about incontinence or sexual problems in emails or direct messages.

We double-checked Jule's entire CV, were able to refute it completely and finally found forum posts at Planet-Liebe that were published between 2005 and 2008 (before her accident) and were undoubtedly written by the same author behind Jule.

WTF IS JULE?!

Picture by ZDF

After all this research, we got the perfect opportunity to go public with our findings.

Together with the production company FLAPPERS FILM & VFX, we were able to shoot a 4-part documentary about the case: WTF IS JULE?, which was broadcast on ZDF in December 2024 and has been available in the media library ever since. This documentary was allowed to be broadcast without any changes and was important for us to present evidence publicly, even if we could not name some of it for legal reasons.

It answers the question: is it really possible that the older man who was in Jule's imprint for 10 years, Chairman of an inclusive sports club and swimming coach, was pretending to be a young disabled woman and also her disabled foster daughter - and why? We are joined by journalists, psychologists and a language profiler.

At INPUT 2025 in Bilbao, Spain (an annual international conference of public media professionals and creators who gather to screen programmes from around the world) on May 5, 2025, the documentary about Jule Stinkesocke, WTF IS JULE?!, was presented to a European audience by our producer Kai and the author Lorelei.

On May 7, 2025, WTF IS JULE?! was nominated for the German Entertainment Award - together with “Herbstresidenz mit Tim Mälzer und André Dietz”, the reality documentary “Kaulitz & Kaulitz” produced for Netflix and “Magic Moves” with the Ehrlich Brothers.

And the story continues - stay tuned 😉

🇩🇪 German version

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