Suspended sentence for mother of killed Leonie

Created: 08/03/2022Updated: 08/03/2022 2:38 p.m

The defendant and mother of six-year-old Leonie is facing district court while the appeal process continues.

© Stefan Sauer/dpa

In January 2019, six-year-old Leonie died in Torgelow.

Her stepfather had severely abused her and portrayed it as a "fall down the stairs".

The man got life imprisonment.

The mother, who did not provide help in time, but provided information, is now receiving a suspended sentence.

Neubrandenburg - The legal processing of the death of six-year-old Leonie from Torgelow in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania seems to have ended after three and a half years.

After the stepfather was finally sentenced to life imprisonment, the mother now remains free.

That was determined by the Neubrandenburg district court on Wednesday.

The Appeals Chamber suspended the 27-year-old woman's two-year prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter on appeal.

Judge Jochen Unterlöhner cited the major educational contribution that the mother had made in the lawsuits against her stepfather and the stabilization of her family relationships as the main reasons.

The verdict is not yet legally binding.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys had called for the suspension to be suspended.

Only the joint plaintiff pleaded for the prison term to be served.

"We didn't want to stop the positive development of the woman and her four-year-old child," said the judge in the justification, with a view to the time after Leonie's death.

Unterlöhner was the presiding judge in the first trial against the stepfather, so he had known the case for a long time.

"Without them, we would not have been able to convict the stepfather of a homicide at the time," said the experienced judge.

At the time, the mother was the main witness for the public prosecutor's office and had "reported about a dictatorial and violent regime by the partner at the time," as the judge described.

Six-year-old Leonie was found dead on January 12, 2019 in the family of five's apartment in Torgelow.

The stepfather had severely abused the girl and her younger brother several times at the time.

When the mother was out on January 12, 2019, he struck again and later tried to depict the whole thing as a fall down the stairs.

Although the mother saw her girl's condition after her return and called for medical help, the stepfather prevented this for hours.

So he hid the woman's cell phone, threatened her and faked a call to the emergency services.

When the rescuers came in the evening, it was too late.

Any attempts at resuscitation failed.

The stepfather is behind bars for life for murder by omission.

The mother was accused of not having gotten help in time in the days before.

She had been sentenced to two years in prison without parole by the Neubrandenburg district court in December 2021 for negligent homicide by omission.

She had appealed the verdict.

Shortly before the appeal process began, however, the defense attorney recognized the conviction and limited the appeal to the sentence only.

After Leonie's death, her brother, who is now four years old, went back to his biological father.

He appeared in all processes as a joint plaintiff.

Since then, the mother has been living with the child, which she has from the convicted man, in various institutions under the supervision of the youth welfare office.

With the probation, the woman can now look for her own apartment and a job again, the judge explained.

The child goes to daycare regularly and is well cared for.

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You will still be assigned a probation officer and have to report every change of residence.

Despite the probation, the mother is now considered a criminal record.

"With the death of her daughter, she has to deal with it until the end of her life," said Unterlöhner.

dpa