Police in Germany reported on Saturday that they found the body of a 24-year-old Mexican woman who disappeared in Berlin at the end of July and whose case has garnered widespread attention in Mexico.
  • Apathy TreeEnglish
    16•1 year ago

    Wtf does this mean? It’s buried at the end of the article.

    A few days after the girl’s disappearance, Berlin police said in a statement that there were “indications” that the woman was “in an exceptional psychological situation.”

    Does it mean suicidal? The earlier mention of “not assuming additional parties were involved” seems to indicate as much, but intentionally vague, euphemistic language makes it hard to tell.

    Or does it mean she was being held and/or tortured? That someone was after her…??

    • Marshell
      17•1 year ago

      I don’t know the details or have any more information, but there is a background as to reporting suicides in Germany.

      Usually, it is consensus between the German news outlets not to report suicides, unless it has been committed by a person of interest, usually a celebrity. This is not a law or otherwise enforced, but a common understanding of the outlets amongst each other, so there will be no promotion of suicide. Here is a source (in German, unfortunately, explaining the reasoning: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/sagen-meinen-warum-medien-nicht-ueber-selbstmord-schreiben-100.html)

      To me, this seems to be a plausible reason for the vague language, but again, I don’t know.

      • @[email protected]
        5•1 year ago

        Additionally it isn’t as obvious as one might think to rule out wrongdoing - what if she was drugged and then thrown into the canal,etc. These investigations take some time, often weeks, and are especially difficult the longer the person is deceased and even more so for bodies that were exposed to water for a long time.

        It simply wouldn’t be a sensible idea to now declare the case a suicide only to revert the statement later on when something highly unlikely turns up.

        Basically the current wording is a hint that the police has some evidence that it was suicidal, but did not rule out all other causes yet.

    • DarkThoughts
      2•1 year ago

      Could be some other form of mental breakdown, psychosis or whatever. Not everyone who commits suicide is actually suicidal, which is usually a state that can last years. Maybe she even thought she could fly or slipped within her confused mind. In the German

      “No third-party blame can be assumed,”

      This, at the current state of the investigation, means that they do not assume any third party involvement in her death.