A mother who imprisoned her daughter for seven years in a single room is facing up to 10 years behind bars in Germany.
The victim – now 8 – is so weak from muscle loss that she cannot even climb a flight of stairs.
She reportedly told investigators that she was never let out of the room in the town of Attendorn, in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
She was reportedly kept locked in her grandparents’ house by her mother Rosemarie G., 47, and had never been to school.
Her imprisonment began when her mother and 46-year-old father separated, according to local media.
When her mother found out her ex had a new love and had been awarded custody of their daughter in 2014, she told him she was taking the girl to Italy.
But instead, she went into hiding at her parents’ home.
But the dad’s family never believed that they had moved to Italy and were certain that they had remained in Attendorn.
This is what they repeatedly reported to the authorities but the police and the youth welfare office were reportedly brushed off by the grandparents, who refused to let them in, according to local media.
This is despite the dad even spotting his ex-partner in Attendorn on occasion and relatives coming back from trips to other family members in Italy and reporting that they had never seen Rosemarie G. there.
The girl’s ordeal finally came to an end after a welfare check was carried out on 23rd September, when the authorities made their way inside the house with a search warrant, and she told them that she had never seen a forest or a meadow in her entire life.
The young girl is now reportedly with a foster family and being cared for by psychologists.
She currently does not even know that she has a father, according to her aunt, her father’s sister.
The aunt, unnamed, reportedly said that her brother “wishes there would be a rapprochement at some point.”
Rosemarie G. reportedly faces 10 years in prison.
Chief Public Prosecutor Patrick Baron von Grotthuss, 50, said: “We are investigating the mother for deprivation of liberty and abuse of her child.”
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Story By: Joseph Golder, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash
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