acts of torture and barbarity against a child, her mother-in-law convicted

From Tuesday January 14 to Friday January 17, 2025, the trial of a 30-year-old woman, accused of “acts of torture and barbarism” was held before the Loire-Atlantique Assize Court in Nantes. one of the daughters of his partner at the time. For his part, he had to answer for “failure to assist a person in danger” and “deprivation of care”. On April 7, 2021, at the family home, in a town near Pontchâteau (Loire-Atlantique), Jennifer* a bathtub at 59°C” to the point of not being able to walk “for nine days” and having to “carry her to urinate”. She was finally hospitalized in Redon for “skin lesions on her legs” after having “sunburned a few days earlier”, according to her father. But the doctors had reported the situation to the Saint-Nazaire public prosecutor's office in view of his head injuries.

Snack flights

Put on morphine and hospitalized for three months, the little one was then “obsessed with food” at the start of her hospital stay and experienced a certain “fear of water”, the nursing staff noted. “Jennifer is mean,” she also told them.

Little Cinderella was in fact described by her stepmother as a “difficult,” “liar” and “thief” child: “hungry,” she “rummaged through trash cans” and “stealed her classmates’ snacks.”

The stepmother actually gave her “a bowl of soup” when the rest of the family was entitled to “a McDonald’s”…

The child was also “emaciated” when she was transferred to the Nantes University Hospital: she weighed “18 kg”, or “in the low average” for 6-year-old children, underlined the general advocate during her requisitions. .

This “little face” with glasses, now 10 years old, is indeed “full of energy”, her lawyer agreed: she “does karate” and “wants to have big dogs to be able to defend herself”.

But the little girl – who “wants to become a scientist” and who “loves playing riddles” – “very quickly left the land of dreams and songs” when her father separated from her mother: she “immediately was perceived as a problem” by his mother-in-law, who made him “a scapegoat” and the “catalyst for the difficulties” of her relationship.

The child was then “locked up for hours”, “systematically punished” and “isolated from the rest of the family”.

During the investigation, her uncle said, for example, that he was “shocked” that she “was not invited to Christmas” for a family meal: her brother Kévin* and his new partner had “left her at his grandmother with the dog.

Five years in prison for “servile” father

The father of the child was also sentenced for “failure to assist a person in danger” and “deprivation of care” for not having alerted the emergency services sooner.

He received five years in prison and a committal warrant at the hearing, while the attorney general had only requested three years in prison and two others suspended on probation.

His parental authority was withdrawn from him by the Loire-Atlantique Assize Court.

In his defense, this man who “gives the impression of being upright and intelligent” – according to the lawyer of his eldest daughter, who was also “abused” by the separation of her parents but who did not suffer the same abuse that his younger sister – said he was “a victim of his own naivety”.

He “really believed” his partner when she told him that his daughter had “sunburn”.

“A painkiller” but not “a child martyr”

Jennifer

“Torture” and “acts of barbarity” had thus become “a shared ritual” between the two, and occurred “almost every day”. “She has become a victim, but I will not use the expression child martyr, which is the next step and which has not been taken,” the representative of the prosecution took care to emphasize.

“The gentleman tells us that he played dumb, that he was servile and that he did not have the courage to say to his partner “You are not attacking my daughter””, summed up the general advocate about this man “allergic to conflict situations”.

“In reality he wants social peace in his relationship. »

The representative of the prosecution had the harshest words for Jennifer investigators during its “four successive versions”.

In police custody, she first spoke of “a domestic accident” during which she had “accidentally spilled the pot” of pasta “on the legs” of her daughter-in-law while she was “running with the dog” .

But “confronted with the inconsistency of her words”, she ended up admitting that the child would have “insulted” her.

Jennifer The “blisters” appeared when it “sat in boiling water”…

For his “three and a half months of suffering”, the attorney general therefore requested fifteen years of criminal imprisonment.

The sentence fell shortly after midnight, Saturday January 18: Jennifer X received twelve years of criminal imprisonment.

It is therefore the return to prison for the accused, whose criminal record was previously clean: she had been released in July 2023 with house arrest under electronic surveillance (Arse) in Eure-et-Loir at the mother of his first companion. She had then already served two years of pre-trial detention.

Agence PressPepper

* assumed first names in order to preserve the anonymity of the little girl, as required by law.

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