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Statue of the goddess of justice Justitia in front of a court (symbolic image)
Photo: Arne Dedert / dpa
A 60-year-old does not have to answer to the Tübingen Regional Court for the alleged abuse of her four adopted children.
Most of the 14 acts that the public prosecutor had accused the woman from Kaiserslautern have now expired, the court said.
The process has been discontinued.
In the other charges, the accused was acquitted.
According to the allegations, the alleged ill-treatment took place from 1990 to 2003 or 2004.
The prosecutor accused the adoptive mother of torturing and mistreating the children.
A daughter is said to have beaten her severely several times from the age of seven months.
At the age of 17, she is said to have pushed the teenager down a flight of stairs.
Another daughter is said to have beaten her so that she once broke her nose and passed out.
In one son, the repeated physical abuse is said to have led to a severe personality disorder.
As a punishment, she is also said to have forced the children to eat cigarettes or sweets until they vomited.
In part, the woman is said to have acted together with her then husband.
The defendant had always denied the allegations.
As the SWR reported at the start of the trial, the woman stated that she raised the children strictly, but only slapped them or pronounced room arrest.
Behind the allegations, she also suspected her ex-husband, from whom she has been separated for many years.
According to the broadcaster, the question of the statute of limitations was already in the room at the start of the proceedings.
The state now bears the costs for the discontinued process.
fek / AFP