24 January 2024 , 22:12
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French officials sentenced a mother to 18 months in prison after she abandoned her son, 9, for two years, leaving him nothing to eat but cake and canned goods.
The mum, identified as 39-year-old Alexandra, left her son behind from 2020 to 2022 while she moved in with her partner who lived about five kilometers away—reports say she would visit on occasion. The boy was forced to live alone with no heat or electricity, surviving off cake, canned goods and some stolen tomatoes.
The horrid living conditions did little to impede his academics as the boy still attended school and earned good grades. Mayor of Nersac Barbara Couturier sounded the alarm to authorities once she discovered the boy was living alone. Barbara grew suspicious when Alexandra asked social services to help her buy food.
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The 9-year-old still earned good grades in school despite the circumstances. File image (Getty Images/iStockphoto)However, it was the specific kind of food the mom selected that prompted the Mayor to step in. She chose canned good over food vouchers, which was very strange to Barbara.
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“I met his mom in May 2022,” Mayor Barbara Couturier said. “She came to tell us that she had financial problems, and we gave her four vouchers for food, but she took some processed food products instead so that got me suspicious. Some residents told me that there was a child living alone, so I connected the two things and I called the local police and the national police.”
Local media outlets said 12 months of Alexandra's sentence was suspended and she will spend the last six months under house arrest. Meanwhile, her son has been taken into the custody of social services. The younger's impressive ability to care for himself at nine years old greatly helped with keeping authorities in the dark.
According to a classmate, the boy told his friends that he dined alone and rode the bus alone, adding that he didn't go out at all and preferred staying home. At trial, the presiding judge scoffed at Alexandria's defence, which claimed the mother did in fact live in the flat with her son.
The assertion was quashed by neighbour accounts and mobile data obtained by local police, proving the opposite of Alexandria's words. Her neighbours admitted the guilt they felt at not acting sooner to stop the neglect. They told local media the privacy of modern-day life helped keep the mother's actions in the dark for so long.
"When there was a family and a village around the family, if the mother neglected the child, it didn't matter too much, because the rest of the family and the whole village took care of the child. It's not like that any more," a local resident said.