GERMANY:A German woman who admitted killing her five young sons may never stand trial, police said yesterday, after psychologists declared her mentally unfit and of negligible criminal responsibility.
Authorities in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein said yesterday that the 31-year-old woman, identified only as Steffi B, had admitted tranquillising then smothering her sons, aged between three and nine.
The bodies of the five boys - Jonas, Justin, Ronan, Liam and Aidan - were found on Wednesday in their house in Darry, a small village near the Baltic Sea coast.
Preliminary postmortems on the bodies confirmed the woman's version of events.
She was questioned by police investigators in a secure psychiatric facility yesterday, where she has been classified as a delusional and high-risk patient.
Regional social welfare authorities said they had been in contact with the family and noted in reports that she was under extreme emotional pressure.
The mother had five children by two fathers but did not live with either. One of the children, Liam, reportedly had a heart defect and was autistic.
The father of the three youngest children, believed to be an American citizen, had expressed his concerns to the authorities in August that the woman was suffering from "religious fantasies".
Volkram Gebel, a local councillor who knew the woman, said: "There were clues that we were dealing with a psychological problem but there was no indication of any danger to the children."
Locals in the village of Darry were shocked by the killings yesterday: lessons in the school were cancelled; instead priests and psychologists were on hand.
"It was clear that they weren't well-off but the children weren't neglected by any means," said a 33-year-old mother.
Meanwhile, police in Saxony are questioning a 28-year-old woman suspected of killing three babies shortly after birth. The woman, who has two other children, denies the charges.
Police in the city of Plauen found the bodies in a trunk in the woman's cellar, on her balcony and in the fridge.
The babies - all girls - were born in 2002, 2004 and 2005.
The cases are just the latest in a long line of shocking cases of child abuse and killings in Germany.
Georg Ehrmann of the German Child Aid organisation said on German radio: "We live in a society where nobody looks around them and where children are not cherished."