02:05 Dead baby Police videos document the unbelievable. Beaten to death, they lie in parks, dumped in garbage cans, buried in the woods or thrown down wells. Mothers have turned murderers 16 times in just three months.
02:24 Dead baby The statistics over the last two years are horrifying. Up to 50 babies are killed annually, the number of unknown cases probably much higher. In the capital Budapest, many infant corpses end up unnoticed, at the city's waste disposal. The number of cases is high in contrast to Western European countries. In neighbouring Austria, there are only 2‑3 cases of infanticide each year.
02:58 driving shot Behind these panels lie those who didn't even live to see out their first day. These are lots allocated to the poor at Budapest's municipal cemetery. If the parents can't be traced or if they don't have the financial means, it's the cities responsibility to bury the dead babies.
03:23 coffin The small coffin of Genoveva Manzinger is buried above her grandfather's. The family oversaw the burial. Genoveva only saw the light of this world for five minutes before her mother snuffed it out.
03:52 jail shot In Szolnok, Police lieutenant, Imre Popp works on the second case of infanticide this year. It's not easy for him to separate his private life from his work. He's a father of two children and his daughter was born at almost the same time as Genoveva Manzinger.
04:09 dead baby Imre Popp:
This young mother was home alone. The labour‑pains started in the morning and the birth must have been around 11.00 o'clock. She delivered alone, tore off the umbilical cord, placed the child in the shower basin and left it there.
When the parents came home, they immediately called for help. The ambulance immediately took the baby to hospital.
04.40 Imre Popp Since there was suspicion of a criminal act, the police were also notified. That afternoon the criminal investigation department arrived at the scene of the crime and the evidence was gathered. In this case, it's important to prove that the baby was born alive. For this reason, we arranged an autopsy from a forensic practitioner. It was detected that the child had been healthy, well developed and that it had lived a few minutes.
05:26 town This is the town of Cserkeszolo in Eastern Hungary. Timea Manzinger grew up in this village and she still lives here with her parents. It's also here she had her unwanted child. No one, not even her parents apparently knew about pregnancy.
05:44 town The Manzinger's are a respected family in the village. For the area, they earn a good living and live in a detached house.
05:59 Policeman The police regularly check where Timea Manzinger is spending her time. The defendant can stay at home until the verdict is announced, yet she is not allowed to leave the village. This evening, she's working - her sister's at home.
06:15 Sister Mariann Manzinger, Sister:
I don't know why she put the child away. I wouldn't have known either what I would have done with it ‑ it could have happened to anyone, couldn't it? Even to those who know when the child will be born but who happen to be alone at that moment.
06:37 Sister Question: What did your parents say?
Sister: They were very surprised.
06:47 Sister Question: Was she scared of your parents?
Sister: Yes, maybe she was scared, but I can't understand why she had to keep everything a secret. Now it doesn't matter anymore.
07:03 Sister Question: Do you have children?
No, I don't have any.
07:15 Villagers In this village with a thousand people, no one apparently noticed the pregnancy, and now it's a taboo topic, nobody talks about it.
07.37 Nursery Since she's no threat to society and there is no danger of her escaping, she doesn't get detention, but she was fired from her job at a beauty parlour and now she plants flowers in a nursery.
07:48 Nursery "On account of the facts and the clear evidence, I charge Timea Manzinger with murder according to Paragraph 166 of the penal code", so reads the indictment of the local public prosecutor.
08:08 Manzinger She does not want to speak about the reason she let her child die, but later behind the camera, she explained that she felt ashamed in front of her parents and in front of the people of her town.
08:25 Manzinger The court psychiatrist described her as clear headed and well informed.
08:35 J. Dezsi Julia Dezsi still lives with her four‑month old daughter Eva in a Southern Hungarian village. When her father found out about her pregnancy, he kicked her out. She wanted to get an abortion, but didn't have enough money and then somehow it was already too late. For months, she was put up in different homes ‑ she desperately tried to get rid of the reason of her tragedy - her child. Shortly before she gave birth, a lawyer's office in Budapest offered her the equivalent of 450 dollars for the baby, only with the condition that it was born healthy.
09:15 ALFA worker Then she met the colleagues of the peoples' organisation ALFA. The Association tries to get in contact with desperate pregnant women, in an attempt to keep the number of infant murders down. The volunteers are supplied with mobile phones and are on duty 24 hours a day.
09:45 baby Eva So Julia and little Eva got a shelter. The ALFA‑Association provides them with the necessary things. Julia even found a job as a teacher in the village and is now looking for their own apartment.
10:07 J.D and baby Today, she can't imagine her life without her daughter. To her what happened six months ago seems like a bad dream. She tries to understand who or what was responsible for her suffering.
10:25 J.D Julia Dezsi:
In the first place it was me ‑‑‑ one has to keep his life in order.
10.41 J.D Question: Did you find it normal, how the community was so aginst you when you were pregnant?
10.56 J.D Julia Dezsi:
It really has to do with the mentality here.
11.02 J.D JD
The people are very conservative ‑ and I don't only mean my family, but the city and the whole area. They excluded us and did not accept me as a single mother. Just the fact that an expectant mother is driven into such a hopeless situation speaks for itself.
11.35 J.D JD
If I hadn't been so lucky, if the Alfa‑Association hadn't existed, I don't know what I would have done.
12:13 Family Since the beginning of the pregnancy, this family tried to find a buyer for the baby through newspaper advertisements. The ALFA‑Association became aware of her and temporarily provided her with a small cottage. However, the activities of the ALFA‑Association are controversial. In Hungary, it's known as one of the strongest opponents of abortion. Even the state prosecutor is investigating them due to their radical methods.
12:45 Family Yet many families are thankful for ALFA. The natural mother of this girl also kept her pregnancy a secret and her fate would have been uncertain after her birth. ALFA organised a secret delivery and arranged a non bureaucratic, fast adoption.
13:14 I. Teglassy Imre Teglassy, Director of the ALFA‑Association:
Maybe it's a part of us as Hungarians that we're a people with an innate self‑destructive attitude. By that I mean this NATION is lacking in confidence as well as in their own personal and social lives. Infanticide has the same roots as a typical Hungarian feature ‑ namely suicide. Hungary has a tragic position in the statistics, it shows that Hungary is leading in terms of suicidal cases. The reasons may be hidden very deeply in the subconscious of the Nation ‑ reasons which lead to this sort of rejection of life. Surely, one has to look at the history of this country. The catastrophes which took place here in the last 100 years: wars, World‑War, revolution, counter‑revolution, changes of government ‑ it's severely affected the people.
14:24 Building The county of Szolnok keeps statistics of infant murders. Tulyia Bajzath works as a police officer in the police headquarters. The 36‑year‑old has become an expert on infanticide. She's worked on over 20 cases in the last ten years. At the moment, she's investigating the case of little David Nyiri.
14:49 Dead baby Tulyia Bajzath:
An under‑age mother strangled her 3‑month old son. This girl became pregnant during a relationship which lasted seven months. She gave birth to the small boy in December of last year. The child was often sick and was treated in the hospital. Early morning on Saturday February 22nd, this incident took place. The day before, she had picked up the child from the hospital. According to the young women, she can't remember why she strangled the throat of the young boy, There exists reasonable evidence that the boy had been crying and only stopped as his mother strangled him. Probably it was a unwanted child who was bothering his mother and who shouldn't have cried at that moment.
16:14 Room Infanticide is rare among gypsies. In this case, some sort of distress must have played a part. In this room Melinda Nyiri and little David lived together with five other family members.
16:28 Room Brother of Melinda Nyiri:
I heard my mother screaming that David wouldn't wake up. I quickly got dressed and called the ambulance. They came, they didn't even examine him and took him away at once.
16:46 sister-in-law sister‑in‑law of Melinda Nyiri.
We kept this piece of his clothing ‑ the rest we buried with him.
16:53 sister-in-law sister-in-law:
Most of the time I cared for the child as if it were my own.
17.03 sister-in-law I fed him changed and bathed him.
17:14 sister-in-law Question:
What kind of relationship will you be able to have with this woman?
17:15 sister-in-law sister-in-law:
l don't know. . . l don't know. . . l don't know.
17:27 brother Brother:
Occasionally I have work. Our mother gets a small pension, and there's my sisters welfare benefit. That's all we have to live off. I work three to four hours a day in construction and earn 2 dollars.
17:57 family Now the Nyiri's room is almost empty. The aunt committed suicide, the elder brother was arrested and now Melinda Nyiri is in custody.
18:11 M. Nyiri She's confessed to the murder, yet can't explain it: As she waits for her trial the testimony reads "It would have been better for all of us if this child hadn't been born".
18:28 Prison The women's prison in Kalocsa is the most severe detention institution in Hungary. Most of the 280 inmates were convicted of murder. 21 of them killed their children.
18:49 prisoners The stiffest penalty for infanticide is 15 years. Yet many of these murderesses don't even go to jail. Often there's no evidence that the child was born alive, especially if the corpse was found after a long period of time. In such cases, the file is closed. Research indicates that most infant killers have no previous convictions and are unlikely to break the law again.
19:54 women sewing While many studies examine the issues surrounding infanticide, in practice there's little to help mothers involved.
20.05 prisoners For these women there's no psychiatric treatment nor research into why they've committed such a horrifying crime.
20:24 I. Kiraly Ilona Kiraly
The Director of the prison.
Here it's the mothers who killed their infants who are the quiet and secluded inmates. They try to avoid any sort of trouble because they know that the other prisoners look down upon their crime.
20:47 Hospital At the Schopf‑Merei Hospital in Budapest a group of Doctors and Psychologists has declared a war against infanticide. Working alongside the state medical system, in two years they'd developed an extraordinary project.
21.02 Physician Since 1996, there's been an incubator in the hospital reception. It allows desperate mothers to anonymously leave their babies in the care of the authorities. The idea was so successful that there are similar incubators at hospitals across the country.
21:28 Physician The incubator is mainly there to symbolise the hospitals openness towards pregnancy. The anonymity is also maintained if a woman bears her child there and wants to leave without it. Over 270 mothers have taken advantage of the scheme. The children left behind go a state foster home and are put up for adoption.
22:06 Physician Head Physician Emoke Seres‑Toth is the project leader. The shear scale of the problem convinced her to act. Today she often hears criticism that her program is actually encouraging mothers to abandon their children. She reacts by claiming that it's during their stay in hospital that many mothers decide to keep their baby. Once they've got the consent of the expectant mother a team of psychologists contacts the families to learn about the mother's social circumstances. The work of the psychologists has proved successful in about 40 cases where the mother and the child have stayed together. It's the petty reasons behind so many of the child murders which most concern the doctors.
23.10 Physician Head‑Physician, Emoke Seres‑Toth:
Although life has become harder, I don't think it's the main reason for this infanticide.
23.25 Physician It's more about being too immature to become a mother. Of course financial difficulties should also be taken into account.
When women are left alone with the problem ‑ with the stress of the birth, this can put them in a such a state of mind that they'll abandon the baby or even kill it.
24.00 Physician continues
women from the country have such a strict up-bringing it condemns unmarried pregnancies. It's also the lack of affection and emotional coldness which goes with it. Most of these girls can't handle the situation without help. Anyway they don't believe in family‑life and lack the emotional security to deal effectively with the problem themselves.
24:42 School A Hungarian high school and a special kind of sex education. Apart from teaching the male/female anatomy and methods of contraception, the teacher feels it's her duty to talk about issues beyond her subject area.
25.00 School What can happen if a young person is forced to carry a pregnancy to an end and secretly bears the child? ‑ we hear of these cases. ‑
Her life is ruined ‑ one student says. ‑
How is her life ruined? ‑
She has to put her child in a home since she can't feed it.
But what else can happen?
25:21 Students ‑ She kills it ‑
Say it louder, we read the newspapers. She leaves it in a rubbish bin. We even had a case like this a couple of days ago. ‑ What do you think, couldn't we have saved this child somehow? How desperate was this woman?
In Hungary, we can even leave new‑borns in an incubator and later, when the mother is more sorted, collect it. Who're these people who choose such radical methods? What's missing from their life? ‑ Help. Who can we count on for help? ‑ We should help one another! This girl kept her pregnancy a secret and no one knew she gave birth. How much did the community pay attention to her?
26:46 Police Car It happened again in the early hours of Easter morning. A newborn was found on the steps of a newspaper stand in the village of Mateszalka. The neighbours called the police.
27.00 Woman "The child wasn't there when I arrived, but the steps were still wet. The towel which the baby was wrapped in is probably soaking."
27:11 Woman For the local people at was a reminder of the dead babies from the past year.
27:20 Locals The police want to find the mother and they have posted wanted notices throughout the village.
27:29 Wanted notice In all likelihood, most women around here, know exactly who the mother is. But its getting them to reveal her identity to the police, which is the most difficult. The closed nature of Hungarian village both protects mothers who kill and the practice itself.
28:08 Hospital This is the district hospital where the baby was brought.
28:14 Doctor Doctor, Judith Biro:
This morning when it was delivered here, it was in a critical condition. The body was very cold and the heart was weak. We had to stabilise the blood sugar level. And later we managed to stabilise the life functions and continued warming and giving infusions - The blood sugar level had to be normalised.
28:50 Baby She looks very good at the moment. She's progressing normally and is drinking from the bottle.
29:05 Card The card reads "Found Child", but the doctors and nurses have already given a name to this little girl ‑ "Hajnal or Dawn".
29:10 Baby During the winter months there was an increase in the number of babies found abandoned. It's a tragic but innocent fact that winter clothing can mask a pregnancy. Unnoticed by neighbours and family, many women continue to deal alone with the consequences of an unwanted child.
29:45 Closing:
Script and camera: Paul Tutsek
Assistant: Istvan Sinkovicz
Editing: Attila Pataki