German girl kept locked up for seven years

An eight-year-old German girl has been freed after allegedly being locked away by her mother and grandparents for more than seven years.

An eight-year-old German girl has been freed after allegedly being locked away by her mother and grandparents for more than seven years, leaving her so weak she could barely climb stairs.

The child, known only as Maria, is believed to have vanished in 2015, aged about 18 months, and to have spent most of her life in a single room at her grandparents’ house in Atten­dorn, a town in the Sauerland east of Cologne.

She bore no signs of physical abuse or malnutrition but her muscles were underdeveloped and she seemed not to have been outdoors for years.

She told youth workers she was overwhelmed by the scale of the world outside and had never ridden in a car, walked in a park or seen a forest, according to case notes seen by local newspaper the Sauerlandkurier.

Many questions about the girl’s apparent life in captivity are yet to be answered.

She was born in December 2013, shortly after her parents ­separated.

The father saw mother and daughter periodically but when the girl’s mother – identified by Bild newspaper as Rosemarie G – discovered he had started ­another relationship, she left a note on his car windscreen saying she was taking their child to stay with relatives in Italy.

She then told authorities she and her daughter were leaving the country in mid-2015.

Instead, however, she appears to have hidden the girl away.

The father said he had seen the mother in the town several times and claimed that presents and letters he had tried to send to the girl’s supposed new home in Italy were returned.

Eventually, he gave up hope of seeing her.

Local social workers were tipped off that Rosemarie G was still in Attendorn and tried to investigate but the grandparents ­repeatedly told them she was in Italy and denied them permission to access their family home.

They also “emphatically” ­refused to let police look around the house, according to court ­documents.

Officials could not ­obtain a search warrant without compelling evidence of a crime.

In the end, that evidence ­appears to have been supplied by an unnamed relative of the mother.

She told police she had visited the house where Rosemarie G and her daughter were supposedly staying in Italy only to learn from the owners that neither of them had ever lived there.

The girl has been temporarily placed with a foster family while she adjusts to normal life and is under close medical and psychiatric observation.

She has yet to meet her father, who said he would like to be reunited with her if he were granted custody.

The Times