Frenchwoman jailed in frozen babies case
By Mourad Guichard
TOURS, France (Reuters) - A Frenchwoman who strangled three of her newborn babies and stored two of them in the family freezer was sentenced to eight years in jail on Thursday after a trial that focused on her psychiatric problems.
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Veronique Courjault (L hidden) leaves court as she is surrounded by gendarmes at the end of her trial in Tours, central France, June 18, 2009. (REUTERS/Stephane Mahe) |
The case of Veronique Courjault, who gave birth in secret three times between 1999 and 2003, came to light in 2006 when her husband, trying to make space in the freezer, found the frozen bodies of two babies he had no idea were his own.
"I am aware that I killed my children and that will stay with me forever," a tearful Veronique Courjault, 41, told the court before the sentence was handed down.
The couple were living in South Korea when her husband, Jean-Louis, discovered the babies in the freezer. Horrified, he alerted the police.
The couple said at first the babies were not theirs and they did not know who had put them there. They returned to France, where DNA tests proved that they were the parents.
Eventually, Veronique Courjault confessed that she had been pregnant three times without her husband's knowledge and had strangled the three babies. The couple already had two older children, now aged 12 and 14.
Police initially suspected the husband of complicity because they could not understand how he failed to notice his wife's pregnancies.
He was cleared after an investigation established no one who had seen Veronique Courjault during her pregnancies had noticed any signs. Neither her physical appearance nor her behaviour had changed noticeably.
Courjault said at her trial that in 1999, when the couple were still living in France, she strangled a first baby and burnt the body in the fireplace of the family home.
The second and third times, in Seoul in 2002 and 2003, she killed the babies and placed the bodies in the freezer. Autopsies confirmed that the babies were born alive.
Psychiatrists who testified in court agreed that Courjault had serious mental problems connected with the idea of motherhood, but they disagreed on how aware she was of her acts.
Courjault was unable to provide a clear description of her state of mind at the time of the pregnancies and killings.
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HOW CAN A PERSON BE SO CRAZY TILL SHE KILL HER OWN BABIES? WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WORLD NOW..
SOME OTHER COUPLES WHO DOES NOT HAVE KIDS WANT KIDS SO BADLY AND YET, THERE ARE OTHERS WHO CAN BE SO CRUEL TO EVEN STRANGLE THEIR KIDS TO DEATH AND BURN OR FREEZE THEM.
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