A Serbian mother will spend just a year behind bars after she was convicted of killing one of her newborn twins and neglecting the other.
The Mirror reports the woman, Jelica S., 23, was living in Lucerne, Switzerland, when she gave birth to the twins in December 2015.
Her ex-boyfriend allegedly wanted her to have an abortion, but she could not afford it, according to the report. So, when she gave birth at home at seven months of pregnancy, Jelica reportedly bashed her firstborn twin’s head against a wall, neglected her second-born son, and then hid both their bodies from her family.
Here’s more about the horrific case:
Jelica S delivered the first baby herself but told the court: “I was scared because he (the baby) did not scream properly.”
She took the baby boy down to the basement, where she kept her washing machine, and hit him against a wall twice before throwing him to the ground.
The mum then wrapped the baby, who had suffered multiple skull fractures and a traumatic brain injury, inside an old Mickey Mouse T-shirt before hiding him inside a giant pink teddy bear.
In court, she said: “I just put him there. I do not know what went on in my head.”
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A day later, she said she gave birth to her second son, who appeared to be stillborn. According to the report, she hid the baby boy’s body in a laundry basket. The court heard testimony that the baby may have survived if she had gone to the hospital to give birth.
Prosecutors asked for an eight-year jail sentence, but a judge recently handed down a sentence of just one year in jail in addition to a suspended sentence of 22 months, the report states.
Infant abandonment and infanticide are horrific problems across the world. A few months ago, LifeNews reported about a baby being abandoned in a grave yard in the Philippines.
Many countries have laws and programs to help desperate mothers who otherwise may abandon their babies. In the United States, safe haven laws allow mothers in crisis to leave their newborns in a safe environment, such as a hospital or fire station, without questions or repercussions. Other countries have baby drop boxes that allow women to surrender their infants. These specially made boxes are designed to keep the baby warm and comfortable, and most are equipped with an alarm to alert authorities of the baby’s presence.
