At the bar, she assured that she did not want to "hurt" her son. "He is part of me," insisted Mylène. Despite everything, this 28-year-old young woman was sentenced this Tuesday by the Versailles Criminal Court to an eight-month suspended prison sentence for having, between September 2018 and February 2020, strangled her child, then aged 6 and depriving him of food, medical care and school.
In court, Mylène, a single mother, tried to make amends. “I live alone with my son because he was born from a toxic relationship with a man who used to beat me,” she explains. I did not realize my state of fatigue. The principal of the school and the teacher of the little boy raised the alert last February after noticing red marks on his neck. The little one told them that his mother had strangled him before throwing him on his satchel and slapping him twice because he refused to do his homework.
Police officers scarred by the smell of dog urine and empty refrigerator
That evening, the police had also intervened in the apartment because the cries of the child had alerted the neighbors. During the search of the home, the police were marked by the smell of dog urine and the empty refrigerator.
At that time, the young woman was working in an animal crematorium in Villetaneuse (Seine-Saint-Denis) and her hours were, according to her, hardly compatible with the education of her son. She does not feed him properly, to the point that when he is at the nanny or at his grandmother's, he throws himself on the food, explaining that there is never anything at home.
In addition, the child should have seen a speech therapist twice a week but his mother never made an appointment. Finally, in 2019, while suffering from a genetic disease, he misses 46 days of school and falls behind in learning. The young woman tried to explain that her son had enough to eat, that she could not make an appointment with the doctors but admitted that she had been negligent with the school.
His lawyer asks for a "human reading" of the file
After this report the child was placed by the courts in a foster family where he still remains. The courts decided that his mother was not yet fit to raise him. "Since it was taken from me, I have been receiving psychological care which is good for me and I hope that after a long process we can find each other again", confided Mylène.
The prosecutor, him, estimated that the mistreatment went well beyond this unique act of strangulation by evoking a gear in which this single mother found herself trapped. The child's lawyer, Me Raphaël Pacouret, hit the nail on the head, describing a "woman who failed in all her obligations and who still tries to dodge reproaches today".
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On the benches of the defense, Me Alexandre Simonin, on the contrary underlined that the violence "boils down to a single act" and that "the child has been neglected for only a year". He asked the court to do "a human reading" of this file. He heard his arguments and reclassified the facts as usual violence and reduced prevention to one year.
