Published March 7, 2023 at 2:45 p.m.
Law & Right. Donia Hassan, 15, died while being placed in a family home. But now the Scanian couple who took care of her are acquitted – among other things with reference to the statute of limitations.
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The family home parents are acquitted of the charge of murder and the charge of aggravated assault causing the death of another is rejected due to statute of limitations.
Even the estate and the biological parents' request for damages is rejected by the Lund district court.
– I had expected that they would receive some punishment for this, says Donia's older sister Cecilia Ohlin to SVT Nyheter Skåne.
Donia Hassan, who was ill with glandular fever, was found dead in her room in the family home in 2012. The prosecutor's office did not consider that there were grounds to bring charges and the case has therefore been pursued by the biological parents as a so-called individual prosecution.
The question that the district court has now examined is whether the foster parents, by not making renewed medical contact, are guilty of manslaughter or grossly causing the death of another .
The court rejects the prosecution for murder.
– It has not been proven that the course of the girl's illness was other than what normally follows from glandular fever and what the foster parents were told about the illness. There is no investigation that shows that the foster parents understood that there was a serious risk that the girl could die if she did not receive care, says the lawyer Björn Hansson.
According to the district court, the crime of grossly causing the death of another is also time-barred.
When examining the damages, however, the district court comes to the conclusion that the foster parents should also not have understood that the 15-year-old girl was so ill that she risked dying and that the foster parents should not pay any damages.