ATHENS – A Greek mother and her Polish former partner have been charge with manslaughter – not murder – in the killing of her 7-year-old son in 2017, suffocating from having duct tape covering his mouth and nose.

Neither were identified under Greek privacy laws barring release of names except for convictions – sometimes even not then – although that’s frequently violated and ignored, especially in cases involving celebrities and politicians.

The killing of the boy, identified only as Andreas, who police said was abused, has shocked Greek society, said the news agency Reuters, over the gruesome manner and how his body was first buried in cement on an apartment roof while his mother was said to have later played video games.

is one of the most shocking cases of child abuse to surface in Greece in recent years.

The case broke open in November 2017 when police got a tip and found a toolbox containing two bags of human bones in the apartment shared by the boy’s mother, 29, and partner, 33, who was not the child’s father, said state-run ERT TV.

The couple was detained and appeared before an investigating magistrate who formally charged them and ordered them kept in custody, a police statement indicating the man smothered the boy while the mother watched.

Outside the court, the man’s lawyer, Alexis Filios, told reporters that the defendant had “a certain way of punishing” the boy but has denied physical abuse. He said the man told the court that the mother took no part in acts against the boy, the report added.

The police statement said the boy’s body was cemented into the wall of the roof patio of another apartment building where the couple lived at the time of the killing.

It said that when the couple moved to their current apartment, the man took the bones with him in a workers’ toolbox which he later hid in a wooden sofa on their balcony, the report also added.