Several girls between the ages of 13 and 16 beat and humiliated a 13-year-old girl in Heide in the Dithmarschen district. The crimes were filmed using a smartphone, a police spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

Immediately after the incident on February 21, the police reported it, and the police have been investigating ever since. The police spokeswoman did not comment on the question of whether the girls had previously attracted attention because of the ongoing investigation.

The Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitungsverlag (SHZ) had previously reported. Accordingly, the girl was hit on the nose, among other things, and cigarette ash and cola were poured over her head. The girl cried desperately, breathed in panic, begged and pleaded, as the SHZ continues. The newspaper had spoken to the girl's mother.

But the tormentors would not have stopped despite the child's pleas. Instead, they agreed which of the girls would be allowed to beat the 13-year-old. Only then can she go. According to the information, the five-minute video should show three strokes. But the child's martyrdom is said to have lasted longer, according to the mother. She speaks of an afternoon.

The girls are said to have later put out a cigarette on their daughter's left cheek and lit her hair. "I found the charred hair band later," the mother is quoted as saying. The perpetrators fled after a police car with blue lights and sirens approached. Her daughter is still being treated in a day clinic.

Violence among young people has recently attracted a lot of public attention. A week and a half ago, twelve-year-old Luise was stabbed to death by two classmates in a remote forest on the border of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia. Two girls, aged 12 and 13, had confessed to the act of violence. They are considered criminally responsible because of their age.

In Lower Saxony, at the end of February, a 15-year-old was sentenced to eight years in prison for the murder of his classmate Anastasia. In the summer of 2022, he suffocated the girl with a 13-year-old boy on an overgrown property in Salzgitter and hid her body in a bush.

At the end of January, the body of a 14-year-old boy was also found in Lower Saxony on the overgrown site of a former garden center. An arrest warrant was issued against a 14-year-old German suspect for treacherous murder. Both were eighth-year students at a Protestant comprehensive school, but attended different classes.

Note: This article has been updated to include several pieces of information.