German prosecutors are investigating the case of an 8-year-old girl who spent almost her entire life locked up in her grandparents' house, reports The Guardian. The child was discovered on September 23 in Attendorn, a city of about 25,000 people near Cologne. The doctors who examined her found no signs of physical abuse or malnutrition, the girl can talk and walk. However, according to the prosecutor, she is physically underdeveloped, “she could hardly climb the stairs on her own.” In addition, the girl said that she had never seen a forest and had never driven a car.
The relatives' motives for keeping her locked up are still unclear: her mother and grandparents refused to answer during police interrogation. The father of the child at the time of her birth was no longer living with the mother. According to him, when the girl was six months old, he found a note on the windshield of his car, which said that her mother was leaving with the child in Calabria. In the same year, the man turned to the social security authorities because he continued to see his former partner and child in Attendorn, and the police interrogated the girl's maternal grandparents, but they said that the mother and child had left for Italy.
This year, residents of a neighboring town contacted the police, saying that there were rumors in the area that a child had been kept locked up in Attendorn for many years, and the authorities resumed the search. Now the prosecutor's office is investigating, the girl's relatives face charges of unlawful imprisonment and ill-treatment of a minor. Mothers can be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.