A mother who made a denial of pregnancy was sentenced Friday by the Pas-de-Calais Assize Court to 5 years in prison, 4 of which were suspended, for having deprived her infant, who died and that she had then kept in a freezer.
The court found him guilty of starvation and neglect followed by the death of a 15-year-old by ascendant and also gave a three-year probation. The Advocate General had requested five years of suspended sentence with three years of probation against the accused, aged 35, who appeared free. In March 2014, the gendarmes, whom she had called to denounce, discovered in a freezer, in the basement of her house in Lisbourg, the body of an infant, in a plastic bag, dressed and surrounded by a blanket with a bottle.
A denial of pregnancy and childbirth in 2011
During the investigation, the indictment explained that she made a denial of pregnancy and gave birth in March 2011, alone in the bathroom of her home in Embry, where she lived without a spouse with her two children. Employed in a supermarket, she hid the existence of this child from his family and continued to work, leaving for several hours his baby alone, under a blanket and with him an unsterilized bottle of cow's milk. "She could not be unaware that she was putting her in danger," said Florent Fache, the father's lawyer, from whom she was separated but with whom she had reports, which she did not agree. "This child has lived 7 days of hell (...) my client should have a little girl of 8 years today, he does not".
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Coming home from work a few days after birth, she discovers her dead baby, cuddles him for a moment and then puts him in the freezer, to "keep close to her". "She did not understand that he was dead," insists his lawyer Me Lucie Tellier, recalling that two psychiatric expertise concluded to a partial alteration of discernment. For the defense, this mother, whom her grandfather had raped as a child, "did not have the conscience of depriving herself of food and medical care to the point of endangering her child (...). She could not to realize the reality, she was in a denial of pregnancy pursued in denial of parenthood. "
His companion then said he discovered the body of the child in February 2014. He then confided in his sister, who would have convinced his sister-in-law to denounce. Indicted for non-report of crime, he was not returned to the assizes.