Petah Tikva, Israel – The Central District Court on Sunday sentenced Ina Skivenko to 17 years in prison after convicting her of the killing of one and a half year old Yasmin Vinta last year in her nursery “Masha and the Bear” in Petah Tikva.
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The attorney’s office initially requested that Skivenko be sentenced to 20 years.
The conviction was part of a plea bargain in which the caretaker was convicted of assaulting nine babies on more than 30 occasions. Skivenko was also ordered to pay NIS 120,000 ($33,750) to Yasmin’s parents. In addition to the 17-year sentence, Skivenko received an 18 month suspended sentence.
Tensions ran high in the courtroom as the judge read out the court ruling, which included gruesome details of Skivenko’s assaults on the children. Yasmin’s parents were distraught and said Skivenko should have been sentenced to many more years in prison for what she did.
Outside the court, parents protested in solidarity with Yasmin’s parents. After the ruling was read the protesters called Skivenko a “murderer” and “child killer.”
Skivenko’s sentence came in the wake of several recent cases in which caretakers and kindergarten teachers were exposed as having mistreated the children in their care.
Tzipora David, another caretaker, was in a court in Rehovot on Sunday for a hearing in her case in which she is charged with assaulting an 11-month old baby.
These people are nuts or what?!