The 3-year-old girl was starving and covered in bruises when child services took her in the spring of 2019. The mother and her ex-companion are being prosecuted in the Thionville Criminal Court for hitting her, deprived of care and food for weeks.
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07:00 | updated at 12:01
The photos of the little girl’s body and face, covered in bruises, are unbearable. The mother of the child and the man with whom she lived between January and March 2019, in Hayange, are being prosecuted before the criminal court for habitual violence committed on the girl and for having deprived her of care. The victim was barely 3 years old.
On March 31, 2019, her aunt came to pick her up to take her to the grandmother’s. The little one is hungry. She has bruises on her arms, legs, mouth, buttocks. The doctor gives the alert. She is being cared for by child services. A search is conducted only a month later at the home where his mother has settled.
Again, the president of the court decides to project the photos taken in each room. He also reads the report which describes the place, unsanitary, disorderly, impregnated with a strong smell of tobacco. The ground is strewn with rubbish. No clothes, no food, no hygiene products for children are found in the apartment. A narrow bedroom attracts the attention of the authorities. A small round mattress, soiled, and a bathtub filled with various objects are placed on the ground where traces of excrement are observed. The window is obscured by a blanket. “It’s the room where he locked my daughter,” says the mother.
” It is not me ! »
At the helm, the two defendants blame each other. They met at a help center through work. They were a couple. But the 42-year-old claims they weren’t anymore. He denies all responsibility. “He’s not my child,” he insists. “I did not intervene, I was wrong,” he concedes only. A witness, often present in the apartment, nevertheless says that he saw him hit the little one and put her under cold water. “He is a drug addict”, sweeps the lawyer, Me La Schiazza, who pleads the release of his client under curatorship.
“I’ve never hurt my daughter, it’s all my life,” swears the mother. She explains that she was under the influence of her ex-companion. Except that this is not the version that she delivers in 2019 during her custody. In her first audition, she recognizes blows, bites. She says that she locked the little one in the bedroom, that she blocked the door with a chair and that she turned up the sound of the TV so as not to hear her scream. Then she confesses that she bathed her daughter once a week and left her in her diaper all day. The burns identified by the doctor will also confirm this. “It’s not me,” says the defendant today.She does not remember the bruise on her daughter’s face, a few months old, which prompted the follow-up of a social worker. She contests the testimonies of her family against her.
His lawyer pleads for release for the violence. She describes a terrified woman who has lost her footing and cites the psychological expertise which presents her as immature and easily influenced.
Judgment rendered on March 21
“They lie like tooth-pullers,” gets carried away by the council representing the rights of the victim. “We will never know what she really suffered. “But she recalls that the child, placed in foster care, never claimed his mother.
The deputy prosecutor requires the total withdrawal of parental authority, as well as three years in prison, two of which are suspended against the mother. She is asking for two years in prison, one year of which is suspended against the man with whom she was living. The court will deliver its judgment on March 21.
