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One of two US schoolgirls who tried to kill a classmate to win favour with a fictional horror character named Slender Man has been detained for 25 years in a mental hospital.
Anissa Weier, who is 16, pleaded guilty in August to being a party to attempted second-degree intentional homicide, but she claimed she was not responsible for her actions because she was mentally ill. In September, a jury agreed.
Judge Michael Bohren of Waukesha County circuit court sentenced Weier to 25 years in a psychiatric institution, retroactive to the date of the crime. That means she will be institutionalised until she is 37. This is the maximum punishment possible.
Weier and Morgan Geyser lured Payton Leutner into a wooded park in Waukesha, a suburb of Milwaukee, in 2014. Geyser stabbed Ms Leutner 19 times while Weier urged her on, according to investigators. Ms Leutner survived after she crawled out of the woods to a path where a passing cyclist found her.
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Weier and Geyser told detectives they felt they had to kill Ms Leutner to become Slender Man’s “proxies”, or servants, and protect their families from him. All three girls were 12 at the time.
Weier apologised in brief comments before her sentencing. She told the judge: “I do hold myself accountable for this and that I will do whatever I have to do to make sure I don’t get any sort of delusion or whatever again.
“I want everybody involved to know I deeply regret everything that happened that day. I know that nothing I say is going to make this right and nothing I say is going to fix what I broke.”
“Physical and emotional scars”
Ms Leutner’s mother, Stacie Leutner, sent the judge a letter this week in which she wrote that the trauma of the attack “has defined our lives” and that her daughter still fears for her life. For months Payton slept with scissors under her pillow for protection, and she still keeps her bedroom windows closed and locked. “She will struggle with the events of that day and physical and emotional scars it left for the rest of her life,” her mother wrote.
In her letter, Ms Leutner did not ask the judge to sentence Weier to a specific length of time in the mental hospital, but she said her daughter would not feel safe if either of her attackers is released back into the community unsupervised. “Payton has a lifetime of healing ahead of her, and she deserves to be allowed to heal in an environment where she feels safe,” her mother wrote.
Nobody from the victim’s family addressed the court during the sentencing hearing, deferring instead to the letter from her mother.
The prosecutor Kevin Osborne argued for the maximum 25-year confinement, which the judge granted citing ongoing concerns about Weier’s mental stability. Mr Osborne said: “Considering the nature and gravity of this offence, being supervised until the age of 37 is not all that long . . . in terms of the fact that Payton is looking at a lifetime of scars, physical scars and psychological scarring.”
Plea for forgiveness
Weier’s attorney, Maura McMahon, argued that she should not be kept in hospital beyond her 25th birthday. She played a video in court with Weier’s father, sister and grandparents speaking on her behalf. “She’s grown mentally and physically,” her father, William Weier, said. “She knows what she did was wrong.” He asked for forgiveness from the Leutner family.
In a deal with prosecutors, Geyser, who carried out the stabbing, pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree intentional homicide with the agreement that she is not criminally responsible and should not go to prison.
She will be sentenced in February, and prosecutors have asked that she be given at least 40 years in a mental hospital.
The “Slender Man” phenomenon started with an online post in 2009, depicting a mysterious spectre whose image people edit into everyday scenes of children at play. He typically appears as a spidery figure in a black suit with a featureless white face. He was regarded by his devotees as either a sinister force or an avenging angel.– AP