Shock in France after learning that a 9-year-old boy from Nersac, a town located in the Poitou-Charentes region, had to survive alone for two years after being abandoned by his mother, who lived with her partner five kilometers away. Her sentence against her mother, Alexandra (39 years old), was known this week, when the Angoulême criminal court sentenced her to 18 months in prison.
The Charente Libre newspaper, which covers the case, explains that during the two years that the minor had to survive on his own (between 2020 and 2022) he fed mainly on cold cans, cakes and tomatoes that he stole from a balcony of the building. in which he resided. In addition, he spent periods without heat or electricity, forced to sleep with three duvets and take cold showers.
One of the most surprising aspects of the case is that the school the little boy attended claims that it did not notice anything, since he is a good student and went to class, and it took two years for the neighbors to report the situation of helplessness in which he was, even though they knew the situation and even offered him some food. Specifically, it was one of them who decided to anonymously alert the police.
The investigators then discovered that the mother lived in Sireuil, in her partner's house, five kilometers from her son. From time to time she visited him to give him something to eat, as detailed in the hearing by the president of the court. However, the neighbors of the house where the mother did live never saw the child.
The mother denied the facts during the investigation, as well as in court, but the neighbors confirmed that the child lived alone in the apartment, where the gendarmes found the refrigerator empty and verified that there were no adult clothes in the house, indications that showed the absence of their parents.
Since he was placed in a foster family, the regional newspaper indicates, the son no longer wants to see his mother, sentenced for "abandonment of a minor that compromises her safety" to 18 months in prison, six of which will be spent under surveillance. electronic, with the obligation to undergo treatment.
