“It became a fight to the death between the mother and the child, and obviously, the child lost”: the martyrdom of Amandine judged in Montpellier

They are side by side in the box, but they are not looking at each other. Him, bearded, looking clumsy, head down. She, with her long, straightened hair, impassive, looking elsewhere. In front of them, the packed room of the Hérault criminal court, and the ghost of Amandine, this 13-year-old schoolgirl, found dead at the family home in Montblanc, near Pézenas, on August 6, 2020.

Eight children from three different fathers

We are here in the atrocity. Sandrine Pissara, 54, mother of eight children from three different fathers, is accused of causing her daughter to slowly die, starving, locked in a dressing room without light, overwhelmed with absurd and sadistic punishments and chilling humiliations.

Acts of torture and barbarity, even to the point of death: she risks life imprisonment. Her companion at the time, Jean-Michel Cros, 49, received thirty years for depriving the schoolgirl of care and food, by turning a blind eye to what was happening at home.

A nail technician who is very concerned about her physique

Nothing to do with the fourth world, in this horror. He operated an automobile technical inspection center in Mèze, and was able to pay Sandrine, with whom he had lived for four years, a house in Mèze and another in Portugal, where she was from.

And then several cosmetic surgery operations, this “nail prosthetist”as she presents herself, being visibly very concerned about her physique, and about having her breasts, lips and buttocks redone.

Cold picked by the president of the assizes

But to understand Amandine’s martyrdom, we will perhaps have to go back, given the first comments of the accused. “I don’t know, I won’t be able to explain to you. For four years now, I’ve been thinking, every day that passes, I’ve been asking myself the question of how and why” she responds to President Emmanuélidis, who catches the couple cold, questioning them as soon as the facts are summarized.

“Why isn’t she eating?”

“The medical examiner answered it. She died of starvation and septicemia, from scratching lesions. You have the why. Now it’s the how. Why isn’t she eating? Either she doesn’t want to not eat, or you don’t give it to him?” insists the magistrate.

“That’s not the case. We didn’t do it, she wasn’t deprived of food.” replies the accused. Amandine, who measured 1.55 m, only weighed 28 kg when she died in the summer of 2020, while an intern at Sigean, she had returned home during confinement, never to reappear. She seemed to be constantly punished, forced to copy lines of writing day and night.

She stole snacks at school

“Why was she in this storage room, Amandine?” “Because she wanted to get into it”the accused responds to the judge, without blinking. Amandine stood out at school since she was little, because she stole her classmates’ snacks, which she sometimes fished out of the trash. And she was deprived of meals, for the slightest stupidity.

“Punished to eat” much more often than the other children in the home, who nevertheless recounted the nights sometimes spent on their knees, a dictionary on their heads, under terrifying maternal supervision. “During confinement it became even more complicated” she blurted. The judge gets annoyed. “We have audio recordings where we hear you yelling at her and hitting her, and we hear her screaming!” The accused: “Actually, I was playing the role of mom and dad and I was overwhelmed” she whispers

Cameras, lock and freezer

“I didn’t see it, I don’t know. I was present, but I was elsewhere”sighs Jean-Michel Cros, who swears he only became aware of the child’s cadaverous thinness on the day of his death, while attempting a paltry and final cardiac massage.

However, everyone had images of Amandine in her cell, the only room in the house equipped with cameras and a door with an exterior lock, constantly on their phone screen. And where, supreme cruelty, there was a freezer that the hungry little girl was forbidden to open.

“Pathogenic closed doors, maternal sadism, very pronounced narcissism ” notes expert psychiatrist Chantal Bonnet-Cathala, who asks questions. “Blindness doesn’t explain everything.”

She notes how Sandrine Pissara was furious at having been abandoned by Amandine’s father, a police officer in Perpignan. “There was a displacement on the child’s body of all this hatred that she might have had towards this gentleman. It became a fight to the death between the mother and the child, and of course , the child lost.”Verdict Friday evening.