A 44-year-old woman, a former childminder, appeared before the courts in Strasbourg. Tried for violently shaking Hugo, a six-month-old baby she was looking after in 2013, leading to his death, she was found guilty this Wednesday in Strasbourg and sentenced to twelve years in prison.
She was also sentenced by the Bas-Rhin Assize Court, before whom she appeared since Monday, to a ban on carrying out any professional or voluntary activity with minors. This sentence, in accordance with the requisitions of Attorney General Claire Vuillet, is “unnecessarily excessive, ten years after the facts”, declared to his lawyer, Eric Amiet, announcing to file an appeal.
“I am not a murderer”
This mother of two appeared free after a long investigation punctuated by numerous expert reports and additional expert reports. “I regret it,” she said Wednesday morning before the court retired to deliberate. “I never wanted to deliberately harm Hugo. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think about Hugo, about his family,” she continued. “I am not a murderer.” Her lawyer, Me Amiet, denounced a “speedy trial” and a “speedy deliberation,” lasting one hour for a ten-year-old case. “With such rapid deliberations, assize trials become useless,” he scolded.
For the parents of little Hugo, a master pastry chef and a secretary-accountant, now aged 42, it is a “relief”, declared their lawyer Pascal Créhange. “They will finally be able to begin the work of mourning.” Parents who had two other sons. “We looked after them ourselves”, confided the father, his partner acknowledging that she “no longer trusts anyone”.
