The trial opens at 2:00 p.m. in Montpellier. The verdict is expected on Friday at the latest.
On the day of her death, from a cardiac arrest, August 6, 2020, in the family home in Montblanc (Hérault), between Béziers and Pézenas, Amandine only weighed 28 kg and 1.55 m tall. The consequences of a state “cachectic”extreme weight loss, associated with septicemia and to a possible syndrome of inappropriate renutritionaccording to the medical examiners’ report.
She had also lost several teeth and had her hair pulled out.
Heard the next day, her mother, Sandrine Pissarra, 54, explained that Amandine suffered from eating disorders, which no one has confirmed, and that the day before she would have only agreed to swallow a piece of sugar, a a little compote and a high-protein drink, before starting to vomit and then stopping breathing.
In pre-trial detention since May 2021, Amandine’s mother must answer for “acts of torture or barbarity leading to death without intention of causing it”, in this case for having notably “hungry”. This former waitress, mother of eight children born from three unions, must also answer for intentional violence against Amandine over the previous six years.
His companion since 2016, Jean-Michel Cros, 49, is judged alongside him and risks 30 years in prison for having “deprived of care or food” his daughter-in-law and having done nothing for her “save from certain death”according to the indictment order consulted by AFP.
-“There is no doubt that Amandine endured destructive and paroxysmal violence from (her mother), the sole purpose of which was to drag her into shameful and humiliating agony.”according to the investigating judge in charge of the case in his investigation report.
Amandine was in fact from a very young age her mother’s whipping boy, who deprived her of food and inflicted endless “writing punishments” and locked him in a storage room, under surveillance by cameras.
According to the psychiatric expertise, Sandrine Pissarra, described by those around her as angry and violent, was able “transpose one’s hatred” of Amandine’s father on his daughter’s body.
The most serious events took place from March 2020 with the first confinement due to Covid, when the young girl stopped going to school.
