The six-year-old girl was poisoned with vinegar and subjected to torture-like abuse, according to the indictment against her parents.
In a video interview that was played in the district court, a sibling talks about the girl’s first day in the hospital.
– She fought for her life, says the sibling.
On Tuesday, the trial continued against the 43-year-old man and 34-year-old woman who are suspected of having poisoned, locked up and abused one of their daughters. The couple have several other children and it is still a mystery why they would have chosen to treat this particular girl badly.
During Tuesday, video interviews with the girl’s siblings were played in court.
A sibling said the girl used to sleep in a crib so she wouldn’t get up and hurt herself.
During the video interrogation, the interrogator asked questions about what it was like on Christmas Eve when the girl ingested vinegar.
– She had managed to get up. It happens sometimes, says the sibling.
The sibling then describes how the girl was very ill after she ingested the vinegar.
– She fought for her life.
Contradicts the prosecution’s theory
The sibling was also asked about other places the girl is said to have slept and then mentioned a mattress on the floor that they used for a few days before finding the other bed.
An information that goes against what the prosecutor claims – that the girl was locked and tied in a car seat in the laundry room.
The sibling’s testimony also contradicts the prosecutor’s theory that the girl must have been poisoned by the parents. According to the sibling, the girl must have taken the vinegar herself.
– There has been some misunderstanding, says the sibling.
The sibling claims to have had a good relationship with the parents and that they are both caring and kind.
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The parents say the girl drank the vinegar on her own.
1 / 2Photo: POLICE
“Don’t tell me everything”
After a short break in the morning, the court continued to show video interrogations where the interrogator showed pictures from the house where the family lived before. And pictures of a room where the girl was supposed to have been locked in. The interrogator asked why the bed in the room was wet.
– I do not really know. Mom and dad don’t tell me everything because I’m still a child and stuff, says the sibling.
The sibling says that the door to this room was sometimes closed. Then the interrogator asks how often it was closed.
– I do not know. It was often but not all the time, says the sibling.
Worried about the family
The sibling, who is placed in emergency care, is worried about how the other children are doing and how their parents are doing when they are in custody.
– Do they get what they need if they are in pain? Dad has medicine that he takes every morning, says the sibling in the video interview.
In the afternoon, later interrogations are recorded. Then it emerges that it is the mother who told parts of the sequence of events to the sibling. Not the one who observed it himself.
– Mother tells me, says the sibling.
The two suspected parents sit silently in the courtroom as the video interviews are played.
Both the woman and the man deny wrongdoing. They believe that the girl drank vinegar on her own and that she was treated just like the other children in the family.
The case was discovered on the night of Christmas Eve last year when the girl came into the emergency room badly injured. The girl was then so bad that her stomach was completely corroded by vinegar and had to be operated on. Doctors also discovered that she was severely malnourished and had multiple self-healed fractures, burns and wounds.
The police investigation into what happened to the girl is several thousand pages long. The parents have been charged with extremely serious assault, three cases of aggravated assault, two cases of illegal deprivation of liberty and serious breach of peace. The trial began in November and will extend into January.