A 15-year-old girl has been sentenced to 40 years in a mental institution after admitting her part in an attempted murder carried out to win favour with a fictional internet character, Slender Man.
Morgan Geyser and her friend Anissa Weier were both aged 12 when they lured their 12-year-old classmate to a park in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where Geyser stabbed her 19 times while Weier “urged her on”, the BBC says.
The pair left the victim for dead, but she was able to crawl from where she was attacked and was found by a passing cyclist.
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One of the girls told police at the time that if they had not carried out the attack, her family would have been killed by Slender Man, an imaginary monster first created on a comedy internet forum and often portrayed as a tall, thin figure with a blank face and tentacles protruding from his back.
Geyser pleaded guilty to the stabbing in October, and has been undergoing psychiatric treatment while waiting to be sentenced, and is “making progress with her mental illness, to various degrees”, The Guardian reports.
Judge Michael Bohren handed Geyser the maximum sentence sought by prosecutors, arguing that the crime was premeditated and Geyser remained a danger to herself and to others.
“We can’t forget what we are dealing with,” Bohren said, “and we can't forget that this was an attempted murder.”
Geyser broke down in court when she was given an opportunity to apologise to the victim and her family. “I never meant this to happen and I hope that she's doing well,” she said.
The other teen involved in the stabbing, Anissa Weier, was sentenced to 25 years in a mental institution in December.
