German welfare authorities have placed in foster care an eight-year-old girl whose mother allegedly kept her in a locked room for most of her life.
The girl, identified only as Maria, told investigators she had never been out of her house in the western town of Attendorn, near Cologne, and had never seen a forest or a field.
Her mother is under investigation and faces a possible 10-year prison sentence for abuse of a minor and false imprisonment, beginning from shortly after the girl’s first birthday.
Local welfare authorities said the girl was now with a foster family and doing well “given the circumstances”.
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“The girl can read and do sums but has difficulty climbing stairs, we’ll have to see how that develops,” said Michael Färber, a local welfare official. He said the girl was “surprised but also pleased” to experience the outside world but was under close observation given the sudden separation from her mother.
Public prosecutor Patrick von Grotthus said interviews were ongoing to establish a motive for the behaviour of the mother, who lives with her own parents. That the girl had not been seen for many years, he said, was an indication that her mother and grandparents had acted “very secretly and very carefully” to conceal her existence.
“It seems the girl was effectively in hiding for seven years ... until the youth welfare office determined where the girl was,” he said. “Of course this raises the question for us: could this have happened earlier and did the youth welfare office follow up adequately on all information it received?”
Investigators are looking, too, at the role played by the girl’s grandparents, who lived with their daughter and the girl. When visited by social workers, the grandparents refused them entry and said several times that their daughter and granddaughter had moved to Italy in 2006. “We had no indications that the mother was not in Italy,” said Mr Färber.
According to media reports, German welfare authorities were given several tip-offs about the girl. The latest came during the summer when a couple from Attendorn tried, and failed, to locate the mother and girl while on holidays in Italy.
The search of the house in Attendorn, which revealed the captive girl, took place after Italian authorities notified the German welfare office that the mother and child were “not resident at any known address in Italy and probably never were”.
The girl’s father also apparently believed his daughter was living in Italy with his ex-partner.
His sister, the girl’s aunt, told the Bild tabloid he had continued to pay alimony. “When Maria was born my brother and the mother had already separated,” said the unnamed aunt. “She doesn’t know she has a father, he hopes that they will become closer.”
The case has shocked people across Germany and in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
“How could the child be cut off from the outside world for so long and why did no one notice the child had not gone to school?” asked Dennis Maelzer, state family spokesman for the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD).
