Grisly baby murder cases shock Germany
Pastor Dale Morgan
Grisly baby murder cases shock Germany*
* Story Highlights
* Baby murder cases leave Germans soul-searching over reasons
* Dead infants found stashed in freezers, a fish tank and suffocated
in bags
* Hospitals get 'baby hatches' so mothers gave leave children
anonymously
BERLIN (AP) -- Babies stashed away in freezers. A tiny skeleton found in
a fish tank. Infants suffocated in plastic bags.
The dead bodies of three babies were found in the freezer of this
Wenden, Germany home on May 4.
Germany has been gripped by soul-searching over a series of grisly cases
of mothers murdering their babies at a time when the state is pushing
legislation to encourage people to have more children.
Many of the suspects have been struggling single women who hid their
pregnancy from friends and family, gave birth alone and killed the
newborn out of fear or desperation -- increasing calls for support
programs for single mothers.
In the latest case, police in the southwestern state of
Baden-Wuerttemberg said Wednesday that a 20-year-old woman confessed to
putting her newborn infant in the freezer about three or four weeks ago,
thinking it was dead.
An autopsy has shown that the child was alive when put into the freezer
and the woman, who was not identified, has been taken into custody.
Gruesome cases stun Germany
Experts say the rate of German mothers murdering their children is no
higher than elsewhere in Europe. In 2006, the latest year for which
numbers were available, 82 young children here were killed by a parent,
according to crime statistics compiled by the federal government.
But the recent spate of gruesome cases has stunned the nation and
prompted questions about cracks in Germany's fabled social welfare system.
Earlier this month, a teenager scrounging for a frozen pizza at his home
in western Germany found the bodies of three infants -- his siblings --
in the family's deep freezer. The mother is the suspected killer.
In April, a judge handed a 15-year prison sentence to a woman convicted
of killing eight newborns between 1992 and 1998 and burying them in
flower pots on her parents' property. The case came to light in 2005
when the caretaker of the house near the German-Polish border found an
infant skeleton in a garden fish tank.
Then in May, a 22 year-old-woman was convicted of killing her three
newborns by stuffing them into plastic bags. The bodies were discovered
in 2007 in cartons in her parents' garage.
More help for struggling mums
Christian Pfeiffer, director of the Criminological Research Institute of
Lower Saxony in Hanover, said relentless media coverage had helped to
draw attention to the age-old problem of child abandonment, leading to
more outreach programs for troubled new mothers.
"It's one case of the media's fascination with a story actually helping
in a desperate situation," he said.
At the same time, the government is increasing spending on family
support programs, with overall subsidies worth $103 billion annually,
ranging from up to three years paid maternity leave to monthly subsidies
of $185 per child through at least age 18.
Many have noted that other countries seem to achieve higher birthrates
by focusing less on money and more on better support networks for women
to combine study or work with child rearing.
Pfeiffer's institute is collaborating with the government on a new
program -- Pro Kind -- in which young women receive free at-home visits
from nurses and social workers during their pregnancies and access to
pediatric care after birth.
According to Pfeiffer, more than 200 mothers have participated since the
program began two years ago.
Hospitals get "baby hatches"
A nonprofit organization called Sternipark launched another approach,
equipping hospitals across Germany with "baby hatches" which allow
mothers to give up their infants anonymously through a slot in the
external wall.
A spokeswoman for the Hamburg-based organization said 35 children had
been dropped off since 2000 at its three hatches.
Michelle Oberman, a law professor at Santa Clara University and
co-author of a new book called "When Mothers Kill," said Germany's
search for effective ways to prevent infanticide was more progressive
than the response in the U.S.
There, said Oberman, the strategy was often to give a guilty mother the
longest possible sentence.
"It takes more than just a crazy and pregnant woman to make this
happen," said Oberman.
American mothers kill more children each year than German mothers, but
Oberman cautioned against leaning to heavily on statistics. From
abortion laws to health care access, she said the social conditions that
drove a mother to kill were too complicated to quantify.
And for every case that makes the headlines in Germany or the U.S., she
added, there is no way to know how many remain a secret.