One of the girls involved in the Slender Man stabbing of 2014 has been granted release from a mental institution. Anissa Weier, who is now 19 was serving 25 years at the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, was sentenced in December of 2017. Earlier this month, a judge ordered her freedom pending certain conditions.
In order for Weier to be released, she will need continued therapy and mental health checks for the next 18 years, which would have been the remaining time on her current sentence. The defendant’s team argued that Weier is not a threat to anyone, so she should be released.
The 2014 stabbing happened after Weier and her friend Morgan Geyser tricked their classmate Payton Leutner into going to the woods. They were having a sleepover when they lured her into Waukesha Park and left her for dead. It was Geyser who stabbed Leutner a total of 19 times while Weier encouraged her. They were all just 12 years old at the time.
Why would 12-year-old girls choose to attack a friend? Because they thought the fictional character Slender Man was real, and that by doing this, it would protect them and their families. The story goes that they thought this would make Slender Man take them on as his servants.
Judge Michael Bohren would not sign off on her release just yet however. They have until September 10th when the next hearing is to come up with conditions for the release. Other than of course the continued therapy as mentioned before. Weier has exhausted all of the mental health assistance that she could get at Winnebago Mental Health Institute and has asked to rejoin society. She’s promised to never “become a weapon again” and says she’ll comply with whatever Bohren comes up with.
The Story Behind Slender Man
Slender Man began with a photo submitted to the Something Awful forum in June 2009 by Victor Surge, which was a handle used by Eric Knudsen.
The image quickly went viral, and lore about the strange and scary figure of the tall man with tentacle like arms began. The story went that he could use telepathy and mind control to make you do things. It became an internet phenomenon and many kids became scared of Slender Man. Kind of how kids used to be scared of Bloody Mary, only in this instance there were many YouTube videos to feed into the conspiracy.
CreepyPasta, a site known for copy and paste horror stories, released a statement when the 2014 stabbing occurred. They had to come out and say in big bold letters that “SLENDERMAN IS NOT A REAL PERSON/ENTITY.” As the story broke, many people were blaming CreepyPasta for having stories up about the character thinking that they created him. Which was not true at all.
They Stabbed Her To Become Slender Man’s Proxies
One website explains that Slender Man has proxies which are his servants. The girls who were involved in the stabbing believed that by doing so they would become his servants. I know they were only 12 but there seems like something else must have been going on between the girls. In the eyes of an adult it would seem that they were using Slender Man as an excuse to hurt someone.
Part of the argument that was made for Weier was that she should have been tried in juvenile court. During the time of the stabbing the media was blowing up about it, seemingly pushing for adult consequences for the two girls. Weier was sentenced to 25 years in a mental institution while Geyser is still in an unnamed institution. Geyser was sentenced to 40 years in a mental institution after pleading guilty to first degree murder.
