An 8-year-old girl has been rescued after her mother, grandmother and grandfather locked her in Cologne in western Germany when she was less than a year old and was not developed enough to climb stairs.
The German media have called her “Maria” and it is claimed that she spent seven years locked in the room of her grandmother and grandfather’s house in Atendorn, a town with about 25 thousand inhabitants near Cologne.
Judge Patrik Baron von Grotus said that the girl has no feelings for the outside world. This girl saw the light of freedom on September 23, and the doctors after the examination said that they did not come across any signs of physical abuse or malnutrition.
During the medical examination, the girl said that she had never seen the forest, the meadows, but that she had driven by car.
Judge Grotus also added that the girl was not able to climb stairs or move on uneven terrain without someone’s help.
What interests everyone in Germany is why the girl was hiding, while the mother and grandmother did not want to talk about it during the police interview.
On the other hand, the girl’s father, who did not live with them, namely he was separated from his wife, said that he had found a letter on the windshield of the car, when the girl was only six months old, where he was informed by his ex-partner that he intends to move to Italy with the girl.
The mother of the girl, Rosemaria G, to protect her privacy, has notified the local authorities about going to Calabria, Italy in 2015.
Otherwise, the girl’s father, after receiving this letter in September 2015, had met the girl’s mother in Antedorn, where he informed the authorities that take care of minors.
The girl’s grandmother and grandfather were interrogated there, who said that their daughter and granddaughter live in Italy.
In July of this year, the local authorities started investigating the child’s whereabouts again, after receiving a call from a married couple from Lenshtat, that the girl was locked in her grandmother’s and grandfather’s house with her mother’s permission.
And when everything was discovered, the other family members were also notified, who told the investigators that she and her mother never lived in Italy, and that they had kept in touch via landline.
And these claims were confirmed by the Italian police on September 12, when they said that the girl and her mother never lived in any neighborhood of Calabria.
11 days later, after obtaining a search warrant, police and child protection workers found the girl at her grandmother’s and grandfather’s house.
The Chief Prosecutor’s Office in the city of Zigen is investigating the girl’s mother, grandmother and grandfather for confinement and abuse. The 47-year-old mother, if found guilty, could be sentenced to 10 years in prison.
