The trial of a 31-year-old woman accused of giving her premature baby medical alcohol when he was in hospital in 2023, causing him serious after-effects, opened Thursday before the criminal court from Sarthe to Le Mans.
The mother, tried for administering a harmful substance to a minor under 15 years of age followed by a permanent disability, faces a sentence of fifteen years in prison before this court, composed exclusively of professional judges.
The child, aged six months at the time, was hospitalized at the end of January 2023 in intensive care following discomfort. Premature and suffering from complications, he was fed via a nasogastric tube.
Despite this care, the baby suffered a series of illnesses whose origin the doctors did not understand, until an analysis revealed a very abnormal level of ethanol in the child’s blood: 7.81 g/l of blood. “No such high rate has been recorded, even for an adult,” declared Guillaume Drevin, a medical biologist, at the hearing, for whom the child risked death.
The medical team immediately made a report to the public prosecutor and suspicion fell on the mother, who was very present with the baby and alone with him before the discomfort.
“She is very worried when her child is better, she is very well when he is not well, she does not want him to leave the hospital,” relates Me Sandrine Soulard, lawyer for the administrator representing the child , since placed with a family.
-In police custody, the mother began by denying, admitting at one point to having introduced alcohol into the child’s tube intended for treatment before retracting her statements.
According to the psychologist expert who assessed her, the accused, fifth of a family of ten children, presents a slight intellectual disability. Abandoned by her father, mistreated by her stepfather and victim of incest, she spent time in foster families and homes for disabled people, also spending several stays in psychiatry for depression.
“She is a polytraumatized woman,” summarized the expert on Thursday, for whom she suffers in particular from “Münchhausen syndrome by delegation”.
The baby, who was the victim of numerous alcoholic comas, had to undergo partial removal of the stomach, damaged by alcohol. Now two and a half years old, he is exclusively tube-fed and suffers from significant developmental delay.
The verdict is expected on Friday.
Related News :