FULL TEXT: Husum, Germany, Sep. 27, 2012,
(LifeSiteNews.com) – German officials have
charged a woman [identified publicly later as Annika H.] with murdering
five of her own children [between 2006 and 2012] shortly after they were
born to preserve her family’s standard of living.
The 28-year-old woman, whose name has not been released,
gave birth to two children, ages 8 and 10, but then allegedly began hiding her
subsequent pregnancies from everyone, including her husband.
She dumped the first two babies’ bodies in public, leaving
one along a roadside nine miles outside her hometown of Husum, a coastal town
near Germany’s border with Denmark. After police realized the babies had the
same DNA, she delivered her next three babies in the woods – but in macabre
fashion disposed of their bodies in boxes in the basement of her apartment
building. Police arrested her on five charges of manslaughter.
Ulrike Stahlmann-Liebelt, the prosecutor, said her suspect
confessed.
The case’s prosecutor, Ulrike Stahlmann-Liebelt, said the
woman made a “comprehensive confession” after submitting to a DNA test.
“She has said that the family lived at a certain level of
prosperity, that it was clear her husband did not want any more children, and
that one reason was to preserve this standard, and she feared that might be
endangered if another child were there,” she said.
“This is a truly horrifying series of events that shows
how sick the culture of death is,” Arland Nichols, director of education and
evangelization at Human Life International, told LifeSiteNews.com via e-mail.
“This mother has taken the life of her newly born so that her husband might
live as he wished.”
Although abortion is widely available in Germany, officials
have not said the woman made any attempt to procure abortions and apparently
had no accomplices in her five acts of infanticide.
“Our assessment is that no one else was involved and it is
apparently the case, incredible as it might seem, that no one noticed the
pregnancies or the birth of these children,” said police official Dirk
Czarnetzki.
“I recall the recent article by Giubilini and
Minerva that argued for ‘after birth abortion’ based upon societal
acceptance of abortion. They, like Peter Singer, argued that infanticide is
okay based upon the ‘logic of abortion,’” Nichols said.
“What’s the moral difference between killing the baby in the
womb and killing the baby just born? There is no moral difference,” he said.
“Both acts are murder and thus intrinsically evil.”
[Ben Johnson, “German woman killed 5 of her own childrenshortly after birth, police say,” LifeSiteNews.com,
Sep. 27, 2012]
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EXCERPT: The circuit court sentenced
chamber Annika H. on Thursday March 21, 2013 to nine years in prison for
manslaughter in five cases, finding the diminished responsibility of the
defendant. The panel of judges responsible for
sentencing remained with her sentence one year less than required by law.
The defense had pleaded to seven years.
“I am so sorry that the five
children had no chance to explore the life,” Annika H. said in her closing
remarks and apologized not only to her family and her two daughters. She also apologized to Klaus R., the waste sorter, and Udo
K., a car driver who had found the two infants.
The experience gave them nightmares.
The presiding judge Michael Lembke said in the court’s
opinion the confession of the accused and her statements showed real remorse,
yet that these were a crimes of “unimaginable dimension.”
[Julia Jüttner, Urteil nach fünffacher Kindstötung: “Ein Verbrechen von unvorstellbarer Dimension” Der Spiegel, 03.21.2013]
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For more cases of this type, see Serial Baby-Killer Moms.
[1549-1/17/21]
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