Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

CRIME

‘Voices’ told mother to kill five-year-old son

A 25-year-old Viennese woman who killed her five-year-old son in July, saying that she heard voices from the TV telling her to do so, has been ruled as unfit to stand trial by Vienna’s criminal court and is being treated in an institution for mentally ill offenders.

Published: 23 November 2015 14:22 CET

'Voices' told mother to kill five-year-old son

The apartment block where the boy was killed. File photo: APA

Psychiatric expert Karl Dantendorfer told the court that at the time of the murder the young woman was severely mentally disturbed and therefore cannot be held criminally responsible. She suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.

The woman had been treated in the Otto Wagner psychiatric hospital for a few days in 2014 and had been prescribed medication. However, she had not continued to take it. “She had no control over her actions. She was completely removed from reality,” Dantendorfer said.

The woman murdered her son in their apartment in Favoriten. After they had had breakfast and taken a walk together she gave him some sleeping pills to sedate him, and then suffocated him with a pillow.

“The television spoke to me,” she told detectives after her arrest. She said she had “a strange feeling, as if I were God” and “felt powerful.” She had believed that her child was “evil” and that she “had to kill him”.

The coroner said that the high dose of sleeping medication she gave her son would have killed an adult.

She was found two days after the murder wandering in a confused state in Kahlenberg, near the Vienna Woods.

She confessed to the two policemen who found her that she had killed her son, and told them she had been staying in a Bed and Breakfast for the past two days.

Are there 'young gangs' forming in Vienna?

Austrian tabloid media jumps on such stories: a group of teenage girls breaking into cars in Linz or vandalism and robberies committed by young people in Vienna. Particularly in the capital, it seems that there was a rise in crimes committed by groups of young people. But does that mean that Vienna has a gang problem?

According to the newspaper daily Der Standard, the Vienna Provincial Police Directorate (LPD) repeatedly states that the much-cited youth gangs do not exist but that there is “an increase in young people appearing in groups and committing offences”.

What does that mean, and what is the difference between “young people appearing in groups and committing offences” and gangs?

According to the police: “The term gang is commonly used in everyday language – without a precise definition in this context. In criminal law, however, the term is clearly defined. From a criminal law perspective, a gang is an organised, hierarchically structured group of people intent on committing offences on an ongoing basis.”

READ ALSO: Which crimes are on the rise in Austria?

According to the police, they are dealing with “groups that come together spontaneously” and are not “hierarchically organised.” These groups mostly commit “thefts or minor robberies” but are not criminal organisations.

So, technically, Vienna does not have a “youth gang” problem, but it does have an increase in young people in groups committing crimes – though the police didn’t share official numbers.

A recent Kurier report stated that the number of crimes committed by young people and children under the age of 14 has doubled in the last ten years.

At the same time, there has only been a slight increase among young people over the age of 14 and even a decrease among young adults. The main crimes committed by young people and adolescents are theft, damage to property, assault, burglary and dangerous threats.

Christian Holzhacker, Head of Education at the Association of Viennese Youth Centers, told Der Standard that it is important not to “stigmatise” an age group and that the word gang is often used in an “inflationary way”. He points out that in relation to the size of the Viennese population, the number of minors committing crimes is small, even if it is increasing.

He also highlighted that stigmatising regions or groups of young people who get together in public spaces is not the answer. “If you want to fight crime, you have to look at the realities of the lives of the people who have committed crimes,” he said.

READ ALSO: Is Vienna a safe city to visit?

What are the police doing about the crime?

Austria’s federal criminal police office has gathered a new special task force to combat youth crime (EJK). According to the Ministry of the Interior, the idea is to recognise the new phenomenon and combat youth gangs in Austria.

The task force is set to carry out checks in public spaces, particularly in urban areas and “potential hotspots”, Kurier reported.

The task force also set up a “panel of experts” to suggest how parents can be more responsible, how children’s use of social media and cell phones can be improved, and how the asylum system can better accommodate young migrants.

However, Dieter Csefan, head of the task force, told Die Presse that most young offenders were born in Austria.

“There are unaccompanied minors, but the young people we meet in the groups and gangs usually have parents. And the prolific offenders often come from a normal home. They can also be native Austrians. So it’s not always just Afghans or Syrians”, he said.

He also mentioned that “lowering the age of criminal responsibility is one suggestion” to fight crime. Currently, the age is set at 18, but there are discussions and proposals to lower it to twelve. However, “that alone is not necessarily enough”, he added.

READ NEXT: Which parts of Austria have the highest crime rates?

Url copied to clipboard!