A woman who killed eight of her newborn babies, burying them in flowerpots and a fish tank, was jailed for 15 years yesterday in the worst case of infanticide in modern German history. Sabine Hilschenz, 40, an unemployed dental assistant from east Germany, was given the maximum sentence after a court found her guilty of eight counts of manslaughter.

She was suspected of the death of a ninth child in 1988, but the statute of limitations did not allow the case to be tried. Her lawyer said she would appeal against the verdict. Hilschenz was arrested after the remains of the infants were found last July in the garden of her parents' home near the German-Polish border.

The gruesome discovery helped to prompt a government drive to improve protection for children. Hilschenz declined to testify at her trial, which opened in April. But earlier she told German detectives that she was drunk when she went into labour and was unable to remember the births.

The court said she had deliberately concealed her crimes by disposing of her babies' bodies afterwards. "We are convinced that the defendant committed manslaughter by neglect in eight cases," the presiding judge, Matthias Fuchs, told the state court in Frankfurt an der Oder.

Hilschenz had said that she and her then-husband already had three children and he did not want more. "She feared that her husband would leave her and take the children with him," Judge Fuchs said.

He said the death of the first child in 1988 "formed the basis for what happened later", and that her inhibitions shrank with the death of each of the other infants, which were born between 1992 and 1998.

Before the trial began the court reduced the charges from murder on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Her defence team argued she should be convicted of only one count of manslaughter and sentenced to three-and-a-half years, maintaining it could not be established conclusively that seven of the babies were born alive. Judge Fuchs, however, said that "there are plenty of indications that all the children were alive".

German convicted over baby deaths

BBC.co.uk

June 1, 2006

A German woman has been found guilty of the manslaughter of eight of her newborn babies. A ninth baby also died, but too long ago to allow prosecution.

Sabine Hilschenz, 40, was sentenced to 15 years in prison, the maximum jail term the court could give.

The bodies were found buried in a fish tank and in flower pots and buckets in her parents' garden in a village in east Germany, near the Polish border.

It is thought the babies were born and died between 1988 and 1998.

DNA tests had shown that Hilschenz and her ex-husband Oliver were the parents of all nine dead newborns.

'Appeal planned'

A jobless dental assistant, Hilschenz did not give evidence at her trial but had previously told investigators she did not harm the babies, but let them die after giving birth alone.

She said she already had three children, and her husband did not want any more babies.

Hilschenz had originally been charged with murder but the court reduced this to manslaughter before her trial began because it did not feel there was enough proof that she had tried to conceal her crimes.

Prosecutor Anette Bargenda said she planned to study the verdict in detail to see whether the court was right to decide against a murder conviction, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Hilschenz's lawyer said his client would appeal against the verdict.

"We don't know how long the children lived, my client can't remember burying or hiding the children, which brings up the question of whether someone else did it," Matthias Schoeneburg said.

'Could not remember'

Judge Matthias Fuchs told the state court in Frankfurt an der Oder: "We are convinced that the defendant committed manslaughter by neglect in eight cases".

He said Hilschenz committed the crimes because she "feared that her husband would leave her and take the children with him".

Judge Fuchs said the death of her first child in 1988 "formed the basis for what happened later", and she found it gradually easier to allow her other eight babies to die.

The court heard that Hilschenz told police that when she was pregnant for the fourth time, she gave birth to the baby in a toilet and the baby allegedly drowned.

She said she could not remember what happened with her other pregnancies because she had drunk large quantities of alcohol each time she went into labour, and did not know if the babies had been born dead or alive.

Her husband, relatives and neighbours all said they had been unaware of her pregnancies.

The bodies were discovered after a neighbour found human bones while clearing up Hilschenz parents' garage in Brieskow-Finkenheerd, in Brandenburg state.

The case has sparked intense media interest in Germany, with politicians arguing over whether it symbolises the breakdown of family values in depressed areas of the country's formerly communist east.

Mother who let nine babies die

By Hannah Cleaver in Berlin - Telegraph.co.uk

April 28, 2006

A German woman accused of killing nine of her newborn babies and burying them in balcony window boxes has appeared in court for the first time, charged with manslaughter.

The trial of Sabine Hilschenz, 40, is Germany's worst case of alleged infanticide and has provoked huge debate on the state of society in the former communist east.

Hilschenz, a dental assistant who, with her husband Oliver, was active in the Stasi secret police, gave birth to the first victim in 1988, before the communist regime collapsed.

The couple lived with three children in a block of flats known to be home to many Stasi members in Frankfurt an der Oder, a small town on the border with Poland.

Hilschenz refused to address the court in the town and her lawyer read from a statement made last August.

In it Hilschenz said her husband did not want more children and she feared his reaction to her 1988 pregnancy. She kept it a secret from him and gave birth in the lavatory while he slept, leaving the baby in the lavatory bowl.

In 1992 she gave birth in a small hotel while on a business trip in Goslar. She left the baby under a blanket and ignored its whimpers until they stopped. She took the body home and buried it.

Her fear of a gynaecologist asking questions that might uncover those two pregnancies prevented her from going to see a doctor and she covered up the next seven pregnancies from family and neighbours.

Each time contractions started she would get so drunk, she said, that she can barely remember what happened during the births or how the babies died - even whether they were born alive.

The prosecution alleges she wrapped them up and abandoned them until they died.

Mr Hilschenz, 43, who has left her, will be called as a witness but has denied knowledge of the pregnancies.

Germany takes long look inward

By Andreas Tzortzis -  The New York Times

August 6, 2005

BRIESKOW-FINKENHEERD, Germany — Just outside the property where the remains of nine newborns were found this week, a small makeshift memorial of flowers and stuffed bears rests against the garden's wooden fence. "Why why why?" asks a poster behind the flowers.

The discovery of the remains hidden in cans and an aquarium in the garage at the home of Sabine Hilschenz's mother, stunned this quiet East German village near the Polish border. Hilschenz, the 39-year-old unemployed mother of the nine infants, was arrested.

She told the police that she had "something to do" with the deaths of two of the children, but couldn't remember the deaths of the seven others because she spent long stretches in an alcoholic stupor, according to the chief prosecutor, Ulrich Scherding.

The story has shocked Germany and unleashed a debate among politicians, psychologists and editorial writers about who bears responsibility for not uncovering the deaths earlier.

Her husband, with whom she had a rocky relationship until he moved out in 2001, and their three children apparently never realized Hilschenz had been pregnant each time. All four were questioned this week and were not under investigation, said Scherding.

Some criticized Hilschenz's neighbors in Frankfurt an der Oder, an industrial city with high unemployment rates, where she has lived since 1984, for not paying more attention or reporting any irregularities.

Others, like the Brandenburg State interior minister, Jörg Schönbohm, took it even further and blamed the legacy of the former East Germany for creating a sense of "indifference" and a "loss of values" among people living in his state's rural areas.

Almost everyone, from the local baker to the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, was quick to criticize those comments, made to the newspaper Tagesspiegel.

"You can't and shouldn't try to explain such a horrible crime with such blanket assessments," said Angela Merkel, the head of Schönbohm's Christian Democratic Union and a candidate for chancellor.

Edith Wolber, an ethnologist, said that the fact that few people realized what was going on with Hilschenz pointed to an overriding sense of indifference not just in the rural parts of the East, but across Germany.

"We are a society that doesn't necessarily look closer," said Wolber, who is also spokeswoman for the German Association of Midwives. "Everyone says afterward, 'We never noticed anything."' She added: "I don't think we are very perceptive, and I think we're afraid of confrontation. Germans like to look the other way."

Following her arrest, Hilschenz said that the deaths occurred between 1988 and 1999 while she was married and had already had three children. She has since had another.

"She said she drank a lot and when she woke up from her alcoholic stupor, she realized that the children were already buried," Scherding said in an interview.

The police believe all nine died shortly after they were born.

After a court gave custody of their children to her husband in 2002, Hilschenz's life continued to spiral downward, said Scherding. The police arrested her in 2003 for petty theft. German tabloids reported that she drank heavily, had different boyfriends and had a daughter with one of them in 2003.

"We are trying to piece together what she did in the last few years," said Scherding.

A psychiatrist will evaluate Hilschenz in the coming months and produce a report on her sanity. Scherding said that she has been calm in her jail cell and added that one of his prosecutors said she seemed relieved she could finally talk about the events.