Installing a blended family should not be an easy task. Especially not when a mother with two pubescent sons brings home a new man – who is also violent. For a 46-year-old woman from Munich, the story ended with her children no longer wanting to have anything to do with her – and her “new” boy has now been sentenced by the district court for intentional bodily harm. Judge Cornelia Wölk saw it as proven that Markus M. had beaten and choked the woman’s sons.
There were emotional moments before the district court when the sons, now 14 and 15 years old, their biological father and mother were called to the witness stand. One son testified through sobs and tears, the other seemed distraught, the father outraged. The mother, on the other hand, sometimes seemed annoyed, as did the defendant, who asked the children questions in a biting tone.
What happened that June night last year? Or do you have to start earlier? In the spring, the mother introduced the new man to the children. “When he came, everything changed,” reports the older son. The mother hardly took care of her anymore, the sons would have preferred to spend the weekends with their father. The mother didn’t come home straight away after work, only much later, when there were ready meals.
“I was afraid that my brother would die.”
There was also an argument that evening because the mother had blocked the Internet. His brother and he were sent to bed, but he couldn’t sleep because she and Markus M. turned the TV up so loud. He came out of the room a few times, and finally M. said to him: “If you continue to bother me, I’ll throw you out. You don’t have the right to live here.” To which he replied that M. was not his father and had no say over him.
Then M. became violent. He grabbed him and pressed him against the wall. The younger brother came and attacked M. The man then choked the 13-year-old. The argument moved into the children’s room. There Markus M. pushed his brother onto the bed, sat on him, pressed a knee on his chest and gave him Watschn. He then supported himself with one hand and choked his brother again with the other until he blushed. “I was afraid that my brother would die,” says the older man and cries.
He tried to free his brother. When the mother came into the room, she said: “Don’t do it, he deserves it.” The big brother informed the biological father, who picked up the children immediately. “I saw her crying like that,” says the father about that night. “He beat us,” both said. Marks and scratches were documented on the 13-year-old’s neck. The mother was stripped of custody. The sons want nothing more to do with her. “The knee on the chest and choked on the neck: In the USA people die from something like that,” scolds the father.
The defendant claims that he acted in self-defense
The accused describes the whole thing as a self-defense situation, the boys attacked him. And the mother doesn’t want to have seen a gagging. Markus M. fixed her son’s hands, so she said he needed it now to be held. She continues to be in a relationship with Markus M. Defense attorney Joachim Schwarzenau requests his client’s acquittal.
But judge Cornelia Wölk considers the children’s statements to be “very credible”. She reproaches the accused for his “massive action” and the fact that he attacked the children “in a protected room, in their children’s room”. Wölk sentenced the engineer to a fine of 5,000 euros.