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Courthouse in Paderborn (icon image)
Photo: David Inderlied / picture alliance / dpa
The district court of Paderborn has sentenced a 34-year-old to three and a half years in prison for exposing two of her children to unnecessary operations.
After a trial lasting almost two months, the Criminal Court found her guilty of mistreatment of wards in combination with dangerous bodily harm.
The verdict is not yet legally binding.
Between November 2015 and October 2018, the woman had one daughter put in an artificial anus and the other a stomach tube.
In both cases, she had faked the health restrictions of the small children, which the interventions were intended to remedy, and manipulated the treating doctors accordingly.
According to the court, she had deliberately caused malnutrition in the younger daughter in order to convince doctors of the need for a gastric tube.
According to the findings of a psychiatric expert, the 34-year-old suffers from Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
This is a disorder that causes mothers in particular to fake their children's symptoms, sometimes even creating symptoms themselves through injuries and poisoning.
The main concern for those affected is to present themselves as particularly caring and medically competent.
bbr/dpa
