The father and mother of a one-month-old baby who died in a caravan in 2020 after being abused were sentenced on Tuesday to 20 and 7 years in prison respectively by the Eure Assize Court.
Convicted of intentional violence resulting in death without intent to cause it against the little girl, as well as for violence against his two other children now aged 7 and 5, Gaëtan L., 40, is also prohibited from having any contact with them.
The mother was found guilty of failure to report and deprivation of care that compromised the health of the children. A warrant of committal was issued. She therefore returns to prison after being released in 2023, under judicial supervision.
Bruises on the leg, right knee, right temple
One night in December 2020, Gaëtan L., a baker by training but unemployed at the time of the incident, called emergency services to help his one-month-old baby. When they arrived at the couple’s caravan, located on land in La Chapelle-Longueville, emergency services were unable to revive the child, whose body showed “bruises on the leg, right knee, right temple and a significant anal tear”.
The mother was at the time of the incident with the eldest child, in the home of Gaëtan L.’s aunt and uncle, on whose land the caravan was parked, “while managing financial difficulties” after several evictions. The couple, now separated, lost custody of their two other children in 2022.
A death that “cannot be accidental”
On Monday, Attorney General Stéphanie Palpacuer had requested 30 and 15 years in prison. “Lucie’s short life could be summed up as a tragedy: 32 days of ordeal in a caravan of horror for a child who cannot speak, who cannot defend herself,” she had declared, “Lucie was conceived by two, broken by two and died because of her two parents.”
The death of the child, from a brain trauma that “cannot be accidental”, will not have been “in vain”, according to the attorney general, it will have at least allowed his brother and sister” to “get out of hell”. Gaëtan L. had admitted during the first day of the trial that he had “not been a good father. I can get angry if I don’t take control, I understood in detention that violence is useless”.
