The girl, named only as “Maria” in German media, is understood to have spent most of the past seven-and-a-half years in a locked room at her grandparents’ home in Attendorn, a town of about 25,000 people east of Cologne. “He cannot have managed to get a glimpse of the outside world,” prosecutor Patrick Baron von Grothus told local newspaper SauerlandKurier. Doctors who examined the girl after her release on September 23 found no signs of physical abuse or malnutrition, municipal authorities said in a statement. However, during the examination he reportedly said that he had never seen a forest, been in a meadow or driven in a car. While the girl could talk and walk, Grothus said she could “barely climb stairs by herself or navigate rough terrain.” Why the girl was hidden from the public for most of her life remains unclear, as her mother and grandparents refused to give answers during police questioning. The girl’s father, who was already separated from his mother at the time of her birth, told the SauerlandKurier that he had found a note on his car windshield when the girl was about six months old, alerting him to her ex’s intention his partner to move to Italy. with the child. The mother, named only as ‘Rosemarie G’ by tabloid Bild to protect her privacy while criminal proceedings are pending, informed local authorities that she had moved to Calabria, in south-west Italy, in mid-2015. When the child’s father reported to youth welfare authorities in September 2015 that he had repeatedly seen the mother and child in Attendorn, they asked the girl’s maternal grandparents but were told the couple lived in Italy. It was only in July this year that local authorities again investigated the child’s whereabouts after a married couple living in the neighboring municipality of Lennestadt alerted police to a rumor that the now eight-year-old had been locked away at her grandparents. home for years. The mother’s relatives told investigators the couple had never lived in Italy and could communicate via a German landline, a claim confirmed when Italian police told the Olpe district youth welfare office on September 12 that the mother and the child had never lived at the address in Calabria that they had set as their new home. Eleven days later, following a court order, police and youth welfare officials found the girl at her grandparents’ home. The prosecutor’s office in the city of Siegen is investigating the child’s mother and grandparents for false imprisonment and child abuse. The mother, who is reported to be 47 years old, could face up to 10 years in prison.
