a former childminder from Loire-Atlantique in court

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On Friday, November 8, 2019 at 8 a.m., the mother took her first child, born on April 24, to her childminder fifty meters from her home, in Chaumes-en-Retz (Loire-Atlantique). Then, explains the nanny during her trial before the criminal court from Saint-Nazaire, Tuesday November 12, 2024: “I give him his bottle and change him.”

The infant is taken to Nantes University Hospital

His two sick daughters, aged 3 and 6, are kept at home “and sleep practically all day”. In the morning, the nanny “plays with the little boy”, but finds him tired. The “little prepared meal” at lunchtime doesn’t work.

She puts him to bed, then realizes that he has vomit a lot. After vomiting a second time, believing that her condition was getting worse, she sent a text message to her dad who came to pick up the child around 3 p.m.

The doctor diagnoses gastro. But during the night, the condition worsens and the infant is taken to the CHU de Nanteswhere he is placed “under maximum surveillance”.

The examinations follow one another and several experts are categorical: “It’s traumatic, it can only be the shaken baby syndrome ».

“The turning point of a family”

The prosecutor goes in this direction, considering that the characteristic triptych is confirmed: “Subdural hematoma, cerebral edema, retinal hemorrhage”.

But the 36-year-old defendant remains straight in her boots: “No, I did not commit violent actions.”

The parents' lawyer, very dignified at the hearing, describes “the shift of this family” following the events and the repercussions on the child: “His cerebellum wandered around in the cranium and at that age, one gesture is enough.”

Me Anne-Gaël Gonsse names the experts who have particular mastery of the subject and who have no other explanation “than a violent shock”.

She describes the child's difficultiesnow six years old, to manage his emotions, knowing that it will be necessary to wait “a good ten years to really know the after-effects”. She is surprised that the defendant remains in her denials and that in the evening, “with the sick girls, the family went to Ikea”.

Plea for release

For the representative of the prosecution: “This is very specific violence, violence of unpremeditated exasperation in the face of an unmanageable situation, due to a baby having vomited to completely change.”

The magistrate regrets “the cold attitude of the thirty-year-old”.

Emphasizing that obviously, “the sentence will not erase this November 8, 2019”, she requires three years in prison with a simple suspended sentence and a definitive ban on exercising this profession of childminder, knowing that the young woman now works in a other area.

It goes without saying, Me's analysis Fathi Benbrahim is not the same: “Why don’t we want to believe my client? We absolutely want someone guilty!

The lawyer relies on the equivalent of the Swedish High Authority for Health: “The triad is very weak evidence of shaken baby syndrome”. He continues: “Our experts are so sure of themselves that they do not envisage a external hydrocephaluswhich can happen spontaneously, but exceptionally. » He pleads for release.

The thirty-year-old persists and signs: “I tell you straight in the eye that I have never committed violence. For five years, I haven't gone a single day without thinking about it, if I had something to reproach myself for, I would have broken down.”

The judgment was put under advisement and will be delivered on January 21, 2025.

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