A Lithuanian woman who admitted to strangling her newborn daughter escaped jail time when she recently was sentenced in a British court, according to the Daily Mail.
Gintare Suminaite, 30, was living in England when she conceived the child as part of a secret affair, according to the report. Authorities arrested her in April after she gave birth in her home and an ambulance crew discovered her newborn baby girl dead, according to earlier reports. She later was charged with murder.
Suminaite, who admitted to killing her daughter in infanticide but not murder, said she was mentally disturbed after giving birth. Taking this into consideration, British Justice Nicol recently sentenced her to a two-year community order with a rehabilitation requirement, according to the report.
“At the time of giving birth your were in a state of extreme anxiety and panic amounting to a temporary impairment of the balance of your mind,” Nicol told Suminaite of his decision.
Suminaite reportedly had a strained relationship with her long-term partner, with whom she lived and has an older child. When she had an affair and became pregnant by another man, she reportedly kept the affair and her pregnancy hidden from her partner, according to the report. Her lawyers said she also had been socially and emotionally isolated in England.
The incident occurred on April 5 when she went into labor and left work early, according to authorities.
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Here’s more from the report:
She described giving birth quickly and easily and said the baby was moving and trying to cry.
She said she wrapped her hands around the child’s neck for a few minutes and strangled her ‘as hard as I could at the time’ before holding her in the shower in an attempt to drown her.
She cut the umbilical cord with a razor then passed out in the bath, she said.
When she came to, she said the baby was not moving and she tied a pair of her knickers around her neck and put her in the baby bath.
She said she did not know why she did it as she had no mental problems.
Her partner said he later found her at home, naked and bloody in the bathroom and called an ambulance. According to court testimony, she told her partner that she had done “something bad” and was going to jail.
Emergency responders initially did not find her newborn child, according to court testimony. When they returned to the house after taking her to the hospital, they said they were “deeply shocked” to find her newborn child hidden in towels with a piece of cloth tied around her neck.
The justice gave his reason for not sentencing Suminaite to jail: “The unlawful homicide of anyone is a tragedy, especially in the case when the victim is so young, even more so that is the case when the child dies at the hands of her mother. However, your own circumstances were tragic in themselves and that is reflected in the nature of the offence to which you have pleaded guilty. You were overwhelmed by the stress of your situation and in a state of partial denial during the pregnancy.”
