Sietske H. came from the Dutch province of Friesland. Her case concerned the deaths of her four infants, in a period running from 2003 to 2009. The names of the infants are not on record.
The date of her arrest is not on record. By April 2011 Sietske H., then 26, was before the court in Leeuwarden, held in custody while the case went to trial.
On May 3, 2011, the Rechtbank Leeuwarden (the district court of Leeuwarden) convicted her in all four cases. The presiding judge was Bert Dölle. The court found the first death to be manslaughter and not murder. The other three deaths it found to be murder. The exact Dutch wording of the findings is not on record.
The sentence was 12 years in prison, the maximum available and the term the prosecution had asked for. No psychiatric measure was added: she had declined to cooperate with a psychiatric assessment, and the court passed sentence without one.
The case went to the Gerechtshof Leeuwarden (the court of appeal). In October 2012 it reduced the sentence from 12 years to three. The prosecution had asked for four years followed by tbs, the Dutch measure of terbeschikkingstelling, which places a convicted person in a secure psychiatric clinic. After psychiatric testing, the appeal court found that she was not fully responsible for her actions. Under its ruling she would go to a tbs clinic for treatment after serving the prison term.
Her release date and the length of any tbs placement are not on record.
2003 to 2009: the period of the four cases.
April 2011: Sietske H., 26, appears in court in Leeuwarden.
May 3, 2011: Rechtbank Leeuwarden convicts her of manslaughter in the first case and murder in three; 12 years.
October 2012: Gerechtshof Leeuwarden cuts the sentence to three years, to be followed by tbs.