Lyme Disease - OT: Monster Parents

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OT: Monster Parents

sewer rat

2005-08-25, 11:49 am

source: telegraph.co.uk

*Death by starvation of 'girl who did not exist' stuns Germany*
(Filed: 06/03/2005)

Parents kept seven-year-old without food in a darkened room until she
weighed little more than the family cat. Tony Paterson reports from Berlin
________________________________

Two German police officers came to carry away the coffin of
seven-year-old Jessica last week but one on his own could have
shouldered the tragic burden with ease.

The young girl weighed less than a stone and a half when she died in her
parents' flat in Hamburg, her skeletal corpse a pathetic bundle of skin
and bones.

No food was found in her stomach: only traces of carpet fluff and
strands of hair that she had eaten in a vain attempt to fend off hunger.

Jessica had been left to starve to death in a shocking case of neglect
that has scandalised Germany. Neighbours and social services were
unaware that she even existed.

Her parents, who have been charged with manslaughter, failed to feed
their daughter but made sure the family cat was well nourished. The cat,
now in a home for domestic pets, weighed just over 11lb.

"The child was a skeleton," said Dr Michael Tsokos, a pathologist for
Hamburg police, last week.

"In desperation she tore out her own hair and ate it. She died of
chronic undernourishment that lasted years rather than months."

Ole Von Beust, Hamburg's mayor, ordered an investigation into the death
and the role of welfare authorities. Jessica was officially registered
as living in the flat. "We have to establish the finest details of the
mistakes that were made, so that nothing like this ever happens again,"
Mr Beust said.

Jessica, whose surname has not been released, lived on the top floor of
a tower block in the rundown suburb of Jensfeld for more than five years
without anyone apparently seeing her. Both her mother, an unemployed
seamstress, and her father, a labourer, are believed to be alcoholics.

Her body was found on Wednesday morning after her mother, identified
only as Marlies S, 35, called a doctor to the home. Her daughter had
been sick, she said, and had crawled into her parents' bed, where she
remained in a coma.

The call came too late. By the time the doctor arrived all that he could
do was confirm that she was dead.

Hamburg police said that during questioning Jessica's mother and her
father, Burkhard M, 49, seemed to think they had done nothing wrong.

"They didn't seem to know what we wanted," said a spokesman. "The mother
claimed that she had often offered her daughter food and said 'If she
wouldn't eat, it wasn't my problem'."

Horrified police officers have revealed the cruel conditions in which
Jessica lived. No light filtered into her tiny room in the back of the
filthy flat because all the windows had been covered with black plastic.
There was no air because the windows were screwed shut.

The couple reportedly frequented a bar near the flat. No one among the
bar's customers or among the neighbours knew that they had a daughter
living with them.

Official inquiries are expected to focus on the role of the city's
schools and youth welfare authorities. The Hamburg schools department
realised, when she was five, that she had failed to turn up to school.
It sent letters to her parents telling them to bring the girl to class.

When the school received no reply, it sent an official to the flat but
he found no one at home. Neighbours told him that they knew of no girl
living in the apartment and last week the Hamburg schools department
admitted that it assumed the family had moved.

"There was simply no evidence that there was a child who was in
trouble," a spokesman said.

Volker de Fries, Hamburg's youth affairs officer, said: "The department
simply did not know about the family."

sewer rat

2005-08-25, 11:49 am

source: pda.dw-world.de

*Trial of Parents in Child Neglect Case Begins*
24.08.2005

[Image: Jessica's grave -- her body weighed just 21 pounds]

Notified by the mother of the 7-year-old girl, police turned up at the
Hamburg apartment in March to find Jessica's skeletal body, weighing
just 21 pounds.

Her parents told police that she had been vomiting, and then fell into a
coma after crawling into bed with her father. An autopsy later revealed
she had choked on her own vomit, likely induced by an intestinal
obstruction caused by a lack of food.

On Wednesday, a regional court judge charged the 36-year-old mother and
49-year-old father with murder by neglect, saying they had agreed to let
Jessica die of hunger.

A lawyer for the mother, identified only as Marlies Sch. told a packed
courtroom that she would plead guilty, but not implicate the father,
whom he described as a weak-willed man.

"My client plans to confess her guilt. She does not expect any
understanding or compassion," he said.

*A shocked nation*

Jessica's horrific death shocked the country earlier this year. Soon
after her body was taken away, police put the parents in jail, as
prosecutors began piecing together their case.

Police later said the parents had kept the girl in a darkened room, with
no heating and no access to water or a toilet. Citing investigators, a
report in this week's Der Spiegel revealed that the father, identified
only as Burkhard M. tried to set a trap to electrocute the young girl.

Psychiatrists have since speculated that the parents, who apparently had
alcohol problems, suffer from extreme personality problems rooted in
their own traumatic experiences as children. The parents denied having
had a hand in their daughter's death, and portrayed her as difficult
child to investigators, according to Spiegel.

*Nobody knew*

The little girl apparently had no friends, having never attended any
sort of kindergarten or school. Neighbors said they saw very little of
the girl, and only saw her parents go in and out of the apartment.

The statements are eerily similar to those given recently by the
neighbors of a Brandenburg woman suspected by police of giving birth to
and then killing nine infants, prompting Germany's largest Sunday
newspaper to complain about the indifference among Germans.

"The population looks away, in the country as well as in the big city,"
wrote Bild am Sonntag.

In Jessica's case, Hamburg school authorities came under attack for not
doing more after sending someone to the apartment to find out what was
wrong. Although authorities sent the parents a notice to pay a penalty
for not enrolling their child in school, they failed to notify the
state's child protection agency.