Hilschenz was born Sabine M. in 1966 and lived at Brieskow-Finkenheerd, a village in Brandenburg near the Polish border. She was married, had three surviving children, and was an alcoholic.
Between 1988 and 1998 she gave birth nine times, alone and unassisted, concealing the pregnancies. Eight of the babies died. The prosecution's case was that she wrapped them and left them until they died rather than actively killing them, which is why the charge was manslaughter rather than murder. She put the bodies into flowerpots, buckets and an old fish tank, kept them on the balcony of the flat, and later moved them to her parents' garden shed.
They were found in August 2005 by a man clearing the shed. DNA established that they were hers, and she was identified and arrested. On June 1, 2006 the court at Frankfurt an der Oder convicted her of eight counts of manslaughter, and on July 13, 2006 she was sentenced to fifteen years; the court accepted diminished responsibility on the ground of alcoholism. Her husband was not charged.
The case caused a long argument in Germany about how nine pregnancies in a village of two thousand people went unremarked, and it was one of several that led to the expansion of anonymous-birth provision. The count of nine in this roster includes the child that survived; eight died.