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Hildesheim District Court: The defendant at the start of the trial
Photo: Moritz Frankenberg / dpa
Beating with a thermos flask, locking up and deprivation of food as punishment: The Hildesheim district court has sentenced a mother to three years and nine months imprisonment for severe abuse of her seven-year-old son in the corona shutdown.
After the school had been closed for two months in June 2020, the child was discovered by police officers hidden in the closet in the single parent's apartment in Sarstedt, Lower Saxony.
The first grader weighed only 13.8 kilograms and had bruises on his head.
The 60-year-old confessed to all of the alleged acts and referred to her lack of access to her own feelings.
She had also been accused of assaults on her now-adult older son, which only came out in the course of the investigation.
Classmates and teachers begged for food
The trained tax clerk fulfilled her late desire to have children with a sperm and egg donation in Spain and gave birth to the child in 2013.
She was separated from the partner with whom she wanted to have a child at birth.
Her son had begged classmates and teachers for food before the shutdown and was missing a lot. When the mother called the boy in sick on the first day after the shutdown, the school alerted the youth welfare office, but the woman did not answer. Finally, the police found the emaciated child who was immediately hospitalized and is still in a therapy facility.
Both the blows with the jug on the head and the withdrawal of food were potentially life-threatening, said the presiding judge Barbara Heidner in the grounds of the judgment.
Psychological damage and physical impairment from malnutrition could persist.
According to a supervisor, the now eight-year-old is very afraid of having to go back to his mother at some point.
According to the court's conviction, he had been starving as early as 2019.
Injured elderly son with fork and craft knife
The motive for the acts remains in the dark, said the presiding judge. The defendant merely stated that her son had "fiddled around". As a witness, the older son was also unable to recall the causes of the outbreaks of violence. Among other things, he was injured with a fork and a craft knife and was punished with food deprivation or imprisonment. At the age of 15 he fled to a children's home and today suffers from depression and social anxiety - probably the consequences of years of martyrdom.
"I am very sorry for what I did to my children," said the defendant tearfully in her closing remarks.
With the ruling, the court followed the prosecution's request.
The woman's lawyer had demanded a suspended sentence and pointed out that she was overburdened with her upbringing.
However, she had always turned down offers of help from the youth welfare office.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.
The defense attorney announced that he wanted to go into revision.
wit / dpa