Sandrine Pissara, 54, and Jean-Michel Cros, 49, are on trial for having left the 13-year-old teenager who no longer left their home in Montblanc, near Pézenas, to starve to death in August 2020.
“I don’t know, I won’t be able to explain to you” declared this Monday, January 20 in front of the packed room of the Hérault Assize Court Sandrine Pissara, a nail technician, mother of eight children, accused of acts of torture and barbarity leading to death, for having left her daughter Amandine to die of starvation, found unconscious at the family home in Montblanc, near Pézenas on August 6, 2020.
“She has been singled out and presented as a monster for years.” HAS #Montpellier Me Jean-Marc Darrigade faces a difficult trial, defending Sandrine Pissara who faces life imprisonment for starving her daughter Amandine, 13 years old in 2020#Beziers pic.twitter.com/JdOkw4GkyK
— FRANÇOIS BARRERE (@FB_Midilibre) https://twitter.com/FB_Midilibre/status/1881340072227709429?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
“She died of starvation and septicemia”
“From now four years I think about each day that passes. I ask myself the question of how and why” replies this woman with long brown hair, in a black cardigan, to the president who immediately responds.
“No doctor answered it. She died of starvation and septicemia, from scratching lesions. The why, you have it. Now it's the how. For what Is she not eating?” “I can't explain to you.” replies the accused, who risks life imprisonment.
Same attitude of flight from his co-accused, Jean-Michel Cros, a 49-year-old from Hérault who was then his partner, and operated an automobile technical inspection center in Mèze. Bearded, in a light sweater, he passes his hand over his face again and again, without being able to shed any light on what has caused him to appear for deprivation of care and food resulting in death, and which risks, him, thirty years of imprisonment.
-Two houses and cosmetic surgery operations
“I was afraid of his anger, I don’t know what could have happened, I was somewhere else” explains Amandine's stepfather, who seems to have been totally under the control of this woman for whom he paid for a house in Mother, another in Portugal, and several cosmetic surgery operations, his partner having had it during their common life redoing the breasts and lips.
“I have no excuses” he insists, claiming not to have realized the extremely thin state of the teenager, who only weighed 28 kg at the time of her death, and seems to have been locked in a dark dressing room equipped cameras.
“Did you see it and preferred to look away?” asks the president. “I don’t know if it’s that or something else.
“VoWho were we afraid of losing, Sandrine?”
“No, children” replies this man whom Sandrine's three other children present at the home called dad.
“So you sacrificed one.” decides the president. The verdict is expected on Friday.
