A year ago
Death of Luise: grief, deep scars and unanswered questions
Remembering Luise. photo
© Oliver Berg/dpa
The student was stabbed in March 2023. Two children confessed to the crime. Unbelievable to this day. The shock is still deep. What does it look like a year later?
Luise would be 13 years old now, she would be in eighth grade and would probably have lots of plans and fun with friends and her family. Were. Would. Would have. A year ago the student was brutally killed. With many knife stabs, on March 11, 2023.
She bled to death just a few kilometers from her home in the small town of Freudenberg near Siegen, where she was found in a forested area in Rhineland-Palatinate, right on the border with North Rhine-Westphalia. Two Children, girls aged 12 and 13 at the time, confessed to the bloody act. Shocking and unbelievable to this day.
“The horror remains,” says Mayor Nicole Reschke (SPD). The suffering of those left behind is immeasurable. “The path to normality is not an easy one.” According to Reschke, the needs of Luise’s family are the top priority. It is difficult to bear that the “question of why” remains unanswered. The two alleged perpetrators cannot be prosecuted criminally. Children under 14 years of age are not of criminal responsibility. The investigation was stopped in the fall.
There will never be a criminal trial or a verdict
However, the case could possibly be dealt with through another legal route. The survivors have sued the underage perpetrators for damages, among other things. The civil lawsuit was filed before the Koblenz regional court. For the torment suffered by the twelve-year-old girl, Luise’s family considers compensation of 50,000 euros to be appropriate, as well as 30,000 euros each for the next of kin.
According to a court spokesman, the dispute amounts to a total of around 160,000 euros. Unlike criminal law, children older than seven could be held liable for tortious acts. The “Westfalenpost” first reported. According to the court, the proceedings are ongoing. There is currently no date for a possible trial.
What about the victim’s family?
For their protection, the Protestant pastor Thomas Ijewski leaves it unanswered whether the family still lives in Freudenberg or has moved away. He expresses their wish that they should not approach the girl’s grave and that privacy should be respected. Even flowers and stuffed animals no longer help the family, he says. Shortly before the anniversary, a sea of flowers, candles and memorabilia can still be seen at the site where the child’s body was found, a few kilometers away.
When asked about the establishment of a central memorial, the priest said that people should keep Luise in their hearts instead of “carving the cruel event in stone.” With the killing of the girl, two “basic assumptions about life” were shattered: that children are good and that friends stick together.” Although the investigators had said almost nothing about the perpetrators, it is clear that the three knew each other.
What does the case do to the sense of justice?
District Administrator Andreas Müller (SPD) speaks of a “cruel field of tension.” Luise was forcibly taken away from her family forever, but there would be “no punishment in the classic sense” for the girls who confessed. It is mandatory to pave the perpetrators a way back to life. For some people this is very unsatisfactory, outrageous and violates their subjective sense of justice. But: “We have to live with it and deal with it.”
Shortly after Luise’s death, a debate about earlier criminal responsibility arose, but was rejected by the vast majority of people as wrong. North Rhine-Westphalia’s Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) had promised that Luise’s death would not be without consequences. In May, the state parliament commissioned the North Rhine-Westphalia government to research the causes of increasing child and youth crime. When asked, the Ministry of the Interior said that the State Criminal Police Office had been commissioned to implement the study, but that there were no results yet.
The girls who confessed are in therapy
The confessed children were placed under the care of the youth welfare office and placed in a therapeutic facility. Do you have severe feelings of guilt? He cannot comment on this, says youth department head Thomas Wüst. However: “They find the burden to be immense.” One girl has now moved to a residential group and is still in outpatient therapy, the other is still in clinical treatment. The two of them were left with their family environment as their “only anchor”.
Pastor Ijewski warns not to make a pilgrimage to Freudenberg on the anniversary, but to commemorate it in silence. Everything is still too fresh, too close, too terrible, it takes time. “Wounds may heal, but scars will remain.”