A judge has ruled that Guenter Parche's "highly abnormal personality" caused him to stab tennis star Monica Seles and was one of the reasons the man was given a suspended sentence.
That verdict brought cries of outrage from Seles, Martina Navratilova and the Women's Tennis Association."I was shocked and horrified to learn that the assassin who stabbed me received a suspended sentence," Seles said in a statement Wednesday. "What kind of message does this send to the world?"
Navratilova, another former No. 1 player, also condemned the ruling. "You guys need some serious help with the laws here in Germany," she said at a tennis match in Filderstadt.
"When one human being can stab another with the intent of seriously injuring, and they walk away, there is something wrong with the law," Navratilova said.
Parche, 39, an unemployed east German who said he stabbed Seles out of an obsessive love for her rival, Steffi Graf, had been detained since the April 30 attack at a Hamburg tournament and could have received a three-year, nine-month jail term. Instead, he was handed a suspended two-year sentence.
Parche left jail today. Parche's attorney, Otmar Kury, told a crowd of reporters Parche had asked to spend an extra night in jail after the verdict out of fear that someone angered by the light sentence would threaten his life.
Hamburg District Judge Elke Bosse said she took into account a psychiatrist's testimony that Parche had a "highly abnormal personality," that Parche had shown remorse for his attack on the world's top-ranked woman player and that "his confession was absolutely believable."
"Mr. Parche has admitted that he stalked me, then he stabbed me once and attempted to stab me a second time," Seles said in the statement released by her publicist. "He gets to go back to his life, but I can't because I am still recovering from this attack which could have killed me."
Seles' lawyer, Gerhard Strate, said he probably would appeal the sentence.