In Charente, the mother of a child who lived alone in a condemned apartment

Europe 1 with AFP 2:07 p.m., January 19, 2024

For having abandoned her 9-year-old son who lived alone, between 2020 and 2022, in the family apartment, a mother was sentenced this week to six months of electronic surveillance by the Angoulême criminal court.

The story told by the newspaper 

is that of a child who lives on cakes and cold cans, who sometimes pilfers tomatoes from a balcony of the HLM building where he lives in Nersac.

Who spends periods without heating or electricity, forced to sleep with three duvets and wash in cold water.

Neighbors helped him a little to feed himself, before one of them anonymously reported the situation of this fifth grader, then sixth grader, to the police.

The mother lived five kilometers from her son

Investigators then discovered that the mother lived in Sireuil, with her partner, five kilometers from her son.

She visited him from time to time to give him something to eat, the president of the court detailed at the hearing.

The study of telephone data revealed that this 39-year-old woman did not sleep with him and did not take him to school or college, where no one noticed anything and where the boy was rather good student.

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The mother denied the facts during the investigation, as in court, but the neighbors confirmed that the child lived alone in the apartment, where the gendarmes found an empty fridge and no adult clothing.

Since placed in a foster family, indicates the regional daily, the son no longer wants to see his mother, sentenced for "abandonment of a minor compromising his safety" to 18 months in prison, six of which she will spend under electronic surveillance, with obligation of care.

His visiting rights were suspended, according to the civil party's lawyer.