An Austrian court sentenced a woman to 20 years in prison on Thursday evening after she drove her 12-year-old son to the brink of death by locking him in a dog carrier, Le Soir reports.
After seven hours of deliberation, a mother was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday for torturing her 12-year-old son. The 33-year-old defendant was found guilty of attempted murder, torture of a minor and false imprisonment.
The woman's 40-year-old accomplice, who had called for help, was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment for encouraging the "continued use of violence" against the child through chat messages and telephone calls.
The court ordered them to be placed in a forensic therapy centre, as the psychiatric report showed that they had "serious and lasting psychological problems," without having lost their "capacity for discernment."
During the proceedings, the main defendant stated that she simply wanted to "discipline" her son and said she was "terribly sorry about what happened," according to the APA news agency. The child, now aged 13, had been "completely destroyed," said the presiding judge.
On 22 November 2022, the boy was taken to hospital in a coma, suffering from hypothermia. The unemployed, single mother was arrested the next day and detained in Krems, west of Vienna.
For several months, she had sprayed the child with cold water while opening the flat's windows, despite the sub-zero temperatures outside, causing his body temperature to drop to 26.8 °C. Rescued at the last minute, he weighed just 40 kilograms.
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She also beat him, deprived him of food, tied him up and locked him in a small dog carrier – an incident that sparked public outrage.
The defence pointed to possible failings on the part of the authorities, while the school had issued insistent warnings.
A few weeks before his hospitalisation, the boy had also run away, asking a family to take him in. The police took him home, according to the Austrian daily Der Standard.
