Shaken – Baby’s mother’s sentence reduced to 13 years

Defense attorney Astrid Wagner said after the hearing that the appeals senate granted her client “a kind of slavery” to her partner at the time. “She’s in therapy now,” the lawyer said. The child’s father had been sentenced to 17 years in prison for murder and was also committed to a mental institution for the mentally disturbed. He accepted the verdict and declined to appeal.

Serious brain injury
The 11-week-old baby died on June 12, 2021 in the intensive care unit of a Vienna hospital from trauma-related insufficient oxygen supply to the brain. The growth plate was torn, the brain injury was irreparable. As the autopsy showed, five to ten seconds of shaking and ten to thirty times shaking was the cause of death.

Father confesses in court
The 32-year-old father admitted in court that he shook her three times after the birth of his daughter because she was crying and he wanted to calm her down. The third time – on June 4, 2021 – he was more violent than the two previous times: “That’s probably why it came out that she had suffered damage.”

According to the now final verdict, the 23-year-old mother had looked away, although she noticed the shaking. The woman had denied this in court, but had been charged by her partner. And the psychiatric expert also reported in the oath hearing that the 23-year-old had shown him how the father had shaken the baby during the assessment.