Infanticide mother sentenced to 8 years in prison
Posted on June 18th, 2009 in Uncategorized
A mother was sentenced to 8 years in prison Friday for killing her newborn before freezing
The Assize Court of Côtes d ‘Armor also imposed to Valérie Serres five years of socio-legal and is required to treatment. The Advocate General had required eight to ten years in prison.
The facts date back to 2007.
The mother, 36 years, welcomed the verdict air shot with tears in their eyes. “We have failed to solve the mystery of Valérie Serres,” said the attorney general.
At the end of his trial which lasted two days, she failed to explain to the court the reasons which led to this infanticide after her third pregnancy. In a final statement to jurors, she said with emotion: “I want to understand (…). Note that each day I’ll live with it all my life. I need my children to move forward.
Living in an isolated farm Côtes d ‘Armor with her husband and their two eldest children, Valérie Serres said Thursday in court that she had “forgotten” her pregnancy despite a positive test at three months. It will only mention of “flash”, “pictures” but may not otherwise explain his gesture by fears of a violent reaction from her husband which was customary. Since then, the couple divorced.
The defense lawyer, Mr. Jacques Demay had refuted the intentionality of the act of his client. He called for “a sentence that allows him to find his children as soon as possible.” “Do not judge this woman as a regular offender,” he pleaded.
Panel Discussions
Friday, psychological and psychiatric experts who have succeeded at the helm have not decided between the “denial of pregnancy”, a complex psychological phenomenon that describes a pregnant woman who ignores her condition, and the “deliberate concealment”.
In September 2008, just months after his detention, Valérie Serres gave birth to a baby girl, to everyone’s surprise. Previously, neither the prison administration, and its jointly owned, had noticed that she was pregnant. In 2005, the accused, depression and “inward-looking”, had also concealed her pregnancy by “fear” reactions to her husband, with whom it does more, until the birth of her second child.
“She acted in a state of great distress”, was diagnosed at the helm a clinical psychologist, Brigitte Elghozi. In his view, the accused, being in a state of “psychological incapacity to accommodate the child”, was faced with the reality “as a blow of a club.” Rather than put forward the hypothesis of a total denial of pregnancy because the accused knew she was pregnant, the expert is hiding behind a “complex behavior that is puzzling and which led to a transition to the act in a “derealization”.
Even assuming the psychiatrist Jean-Pierre Leclercq, which describes the status of “derealization” as “a disturbed vision of reality.” She was suffering from an “alteration of discernment at the time of the act,” he added.
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