Berlin - A German woman was sentenced on Wednesday to 14 years in jail for the manslaughter of four of her newborn children, eight months after the remains of eight babies were discovered in her home.
The estranged husband of the 45-year-old woman's children was acquitted of charges of accessory to murder in the deaths between 2003 and 2013 as a result of insufficient evidence, the regional court in the southern German city of Coburg said.
“She certainly had acted egotistically and selfishly, but there was also a motive, which was to preserve the family,” the court judge Christoph Gillot said in handing down his decision.
During the trial prosecutors claimed that the couple had unprotected sex, despite the husband not wanting any more children.
A mother of five, the defendants' name was only given as Andrea G. due to Germany's strict privacy laws.
“When a case like this is tried, you suddenly have a lot of people who know what the right thing to do is - that a supposed 'horror mother' should be locked away forever,” the said judge said.
“But we first must try to understand this behaviour,” he said.
“That doesn't mean justifying it but rather trying to comprehend it,” he added.
Wednesday's sentencing came after the bodies of eight children were found last November wrapped in towels and plastic bags in the apartment where the couple lived in the small Bavarian town of Wallenfels.
Last week, Andrea G. confessed to her involvement in the deaths of up to four of the eight infants. The court heard from a psychiatrist that she was neither mentally ill nor an alcoholic.
Her husband, Johann G, 55, told the court last week that he had moved out of the apartment before the bodies of the children were discovered by the police.
State prosecutors said it had not been possible to determine whether the other four children had been alive at the time of their birth because they were badly decomposed.
Defence lawyers said they were considering whether to appeal the sentencing.
DPA