Vienna, Austria – An Austrian woman is being investigated for attempted murder and torture of her 12-year-old son after locking him in a small dog cage and exposing him to sub-zero temperatures, authorities said Tuesday.
The case caused a public outcry in Austria when it was made public earlier this week following a decision by the Supreme Court of Justice in late May to reject the woman’s complaint against being held in custody for several months.
The 32-year-old woman is “still remanded in custody and the investigation is expected to wrap up by late summer, with a possible indictment,” Johann Baumschlager, police spokesman of Lower Austria province told AFP on Tuesday.
The woman has been in pre-trial detention in Krems, west of Vienna, since November last year, after a social worker had called an ambulance to the house on 22 November to have the comatose and hypothermic boy she found there taken to hospital.
Austrian authorities, which sent the social worker to the house, had reportedly been tipped off by the boy’s father, who lives separately.
The hospital filed a criminal complaint, triggering the woman’s arrest on the following day.
The woman is suspected of having doused her son with “cold water several times a day while opening the apartment’s windows for several hours amid sub-zero temperatures”, causing his body temperature to drop to 26.8 degrees Celsius.
Due to being severely malnourished, the boy fell into a coma, resulting in an “acute life-threatening condition” before rescue services were notified by the social worker, the Supreme court decision said.
The woman allegedly tortured her son from early September to the end of November 2022 by repeatedly beating and starving him, tying him up, locking him in a dog crate, and pouring water over him.
The physical condition of the boy has meanwhile improved, but “from a psychological point of view he is still devastated,” Baumschlager told AFP.