The mother of the little girl, who kept her hidden to hide her from the father, could be sentenced to ten years in prison
Germany has woken up in shock this Tuesday after learning that an 8-year-old girl has spent most of her life locked up between four walls, unable to see sunlight. “I never knew the outside world,” recounted her little girl, who was released in September, but the news has spread these days after the local press echoed her. The heartbreaking events have taken place in Attendorn, in the Olpe district in the North Rhine-Westphalia region. According to the newspaper ‘Bild’, after the girl’s parents (the German press picks her up under the pseudonym of María) separated, the mother, Rosemarie G. (another fictitious name), kept her hidden in the house of the maternal grandparents for seven years with the intention of hiding it from the father. The parent could be sentenced to a sentence of ten years in prison.
The German newspaper reports that in 2013, a few months after the child was born, the mother told the father that she wanted to move to Italy with her daughter. However, according to her father, the gifts and letters that he sent to the minor in Calabria, where she supposedly lived, always came back and were sealed. The situation, added to the fact that she sometimes saw Rosemarie through Attendorn, made her suspect that the two were still living in the German town, so she reported the case.
The social services questioned the maternal grandparents but, according to ‘Bild’, they assured that both the mother and the daughter lived in Italy, and refused to let the social workers enter their home. Thus, without convincing evidence, the investigators were unable to act until a relative of the parent admitted to the police that he had seen Rosemarie at her grandparents’ house.
Investigated for deprivation of liberty
On September 23, the Police went with a court order to Attendorn’s home, where they discovered the little girl, now eight years old, and freed her from her nightmare. Siegen’s senior prosecutor, Patrick Baron von Grotthuss, alleged that Maria had not been allowed to leave the house since she was at least a year and a half. Thus, little she has not been “aware of much of the outside world.” She had never seen a forest or been in a car. He also stated that, after releasing the girl, the investigators did not observe traces of abuse or malnutrition. She could talk and walk, although she “could barely climb stairs or negotiate uneven terrain on her own,” the prosecutor recounted.
The maternal grandparents are being investigated for deprivation of liberty. Since her release, the calf lives under psychological supervision with a foster family and cannot receive visits from relatives, not even from her biological father, who last saw her when she was about six months old, as she assured ‘SauerlandKurier. ‘, the newspaper that uncovered the horror experienced by María for seven years. “I am waiting for the day when I can see my daughter again,” the father expressed with hope, after recounting that the woman made him believe that her daughter had not wanted to see him for all these years. Now, he hopes to get custody of the little girl.
“Witnessing something like this in the city itself is very worrying for us,” said Attendorn’s deputy mayor, Uli Selter. The Olpe district, whose youth welfare office is responsible for Attendorn, published a letter about it. In the message, the district administrator, Theo Melcher, stated that he hopes that “the investigations will answer the question that concerns us all, why the girl was hidden for so many years and why she was denied a ‘normal’ child life. ‘. But I am pleased that little Ella was able to be released from this situation and that she appears to be in good health.”
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