8-month-old Lila's smile lights up the room.
Obviously, we can't help but think of Rose's, the big sister she will never know.
Besides, it is not far.
It shines just as much but on a framed photo in Renaud and Marie's living room, in Maisons-Alfort (Val-de-Marne).
Rose died in June 2018, a victim of Shaken Baby Syndrome.
Aurélie S., his former nanny, now 37 years old, will appear from this Monday and until Wednesday at the Assize Court of Val-de-Marne, in Créteil.
She is accused of willful violence resulting in death without intention of giving it.
With aggravating circumstances the age of the victim, who was 6 months old, and the fact that Aurélie S. had authority over her.
Currently in pre-trial detention, the nanny faces thirty years of imprisonment.
"The wound will never close," admits his mother
For Marie, this trial should "allow her to mourn what happened to (her) daughter".
“Mourning her own loss, I'll never be able to do it,” she admits.
We are still in pain, the wound will never heal.
But we want to try to remember only the good things.
Of course, the mother hopes for a heavy sentence for the accused.
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But the essential is no longer there.
It is undoubtedly in the smile of Lila and that of Iris, 18 months.
Two daughters born after the tragedy and who undoubtedly helped the parents lift their heads.
But it also took therapy and above all a lot of love.
Despite the ordeal, the couple held on.
Renaud, he does not expect much from the trial.
“I just want her to be condemned for what she did.
“And obviously try to understand what happened in Aurélie S.'s head on June 6, 2018.
That day, she looked after Rose, another child and her own 4-year-old son, in her apartment on the Place des Bolets, in Créteil.
The nanny is a recognized professional.
A graduate, with eight years of experience in a nursery, she is appreciated by her colleagues and the parents whose children she looks after.
But in the afternoon, she calls for help.
Rose is not doing well.
She explains that the child fell from her hands.
The nanny confesses before retracting
A version that she will not hold for long. The investigators quickly find inconsistencies in his story. Before her placement in police custody, she telephones a friend and tells her about "shaking" even before the doctors notice it. Its search engine also indicates as subject: "My child died of abuse, nanny tried after the death of a baby." "
As she goes through her hearing at the minors' brigade, she ends up confessing the appalling. No, Rose didn't slip out of his hands by accident. She threw the baby on the changing table, grabbed him by the feet with his head in the air, smothered him against her, slapped him on the back of the head, pulled him by the hair… She wanted to that Rose "shut up". The child is silent, unconscious. Despite everything, she continues to inflict violence on him. She is slow to call the fire department, fearing that she will lose custody of her own son. Minutes that could, she told investigators, have saved the baby's life.
And then Aurélie S. returned to her statements.
Locked herself in her lie.
Later, in detention, she wrote to her sister that this denial allowed her not to collapse after the "horror" she had committed.
"A monster who took the life of a baby," she described herself to her husband.
"We can no longer trust someone"
The stake of the trial, it will undoubtedly be to understand why Aurélie S., who had followed an sensitization to the syndrome of the shaken baby, rocked that day.
The court will delve into the childhood of the accused who did precisely this job to "repair" the own violence of which she had been a victim.
An alcoholic father who beat her mother, and the violence that the little girl suffered on a daily basis.
She will be the only one of her siblings to be placed in a foster home for a few years.
A few days before the events, she had learned, she explained, that it was her mother who beat her and not her father.
"His abused childhood, that's not our problem, dismiss the parents of Rose.
She, one day, will get out of prison and find her son.
We have lost our baby forever.
"
Since the birth of their two daughters, Marie has stopped working to take care of them.
"We can no longer trust someone," she breathes.
But we managed to put Iris in the daycare center.
It was difficult, we discussed it a lot.
"It's important not to leave it in a bubble, overprotect it because of what we've been through," explains Renaud.
A test that the couple faces hand in hand.
“This energy is taken from the memory of Rose.
This trial is for her, not for us.
"
