crime
Case Luise: Authorities close accounts of the suspects
Two girls aged 12 and 13 confessed to stabbing Luise to death in a wooded area on March 11. photo
©Oliver Berg/dpa
Little is known about the background of the dead 12-year-old from Freudenberg. The speculation on social media was all the wilder. Now the canals have been closed.
After the death of twelve-year-old Luise from Freudenberg, the authorities made sure that the pages of the two suspected girls can no longer be found on social networks. “Social media channels known to us were closed by order of the public prosecutor’s office,” said a spokesman for the Siegen-Wittgenstein police on Friday. The “Siegener Zeitung” had previously reported.
The police spokesman referred to the personal rights of the two girls aged 12 and 13. In social networks, there had been numerous speculations on the profiles of partly anonymous users, as well as threats and hatred against the suspects. According to the police, it is constantly being checked whether anything criminally relevant is being posted.
The two girls had confessed to having stabbed Luise to death on March 11 in a wooded area on the border of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia. With reference to the privacy protection of the victim and the underage suspected perpetrators, the investigators are very reluctant to provide information about the crime.
Warning about lowering the sentence age
Meanwhile, psychologists are warning against prematurely lowering the criminal age. A legal decision, for example due to political pressure through petitions or from the general public, could “have fatal consequences for children and young people and thus also for our society as a community,” explained the professional association of German psychologists and called for prudence. Such a debate would have to take into account all aspects and relevant experts.
The president of the NRW Chamber of Psychotherapists, Gerd Höhner, rejected calls for a reduction in the age of criminal responsibility. He was absolutely against it: “This is an appeal that has more to do with the demander than with the demand itself. You want to overcome your own helplessness and demand something without thinking about it for a long time,” said Höhner of the “Rheinische Post “.
“I don’t think it would do any good either. Do we then start building correctional institutions for children?” At the age of 12 and 13, the alleged perpetrators are children themselves and are therefore not criminally responsible. Freudenberg’s act was an absolute isolated case, said Höhner.
In the Freudenberg case, he would be much more concerned with what happened in the communication between the two alleged perpetrators. “Because it doesn’t seem to have been a purely affective act.” Twelve-year-olds don’t usually carry knives. The find and crime scene also speak against a purely affective act. “There seems to have been at least an idea behind the crime,” said Höhner.