The day after the revelation of the lawsuits brought against a 48-year-old woman from Rennes for reasons of “evasion of her legal obligations” and “deprivation of care” vis-à-vis her 14-year-old son, the lawyers for the mother of family are contesting the abuse charges. The teenager, who lived alone with his mother, was removed from her in July 2022 and placed with child welfare since a medical report following a consultation at the hospital due to discomfort. The child was very thin and had communication difficulties. The daily West Francewho has revealed the casereports that the teenager had been hidden since birth and lived in seclusion.
“He was not hidden, nor locked up, assures Emmanuel Ludot, lawyer. He went out, he went to the library, he went to the museum, he was not outside the world. “He had a social life, he played, he was passionate about history. He was known to his mother’s friends. It is absurd to say that it is hidden,” insists Thomas Koukézian, another lawyer for the family. The teenager was not going to school, he was home schooled.
“A discrepancy between what has been said and reality”
“He and his mother had a completely normal life except that they were constantly with each other, indicates Emmanuel Ludot. They had a mode of operation and a way of life that were fusional. It can be good but it can also be harmful since when children reach adolescence they need to take their autonomy. This is where, indeed, justice considered that leading this fusional relationship, not being educated, was a form of abuse. But it doesn’t fit. »
The two lawyers also challenge the fact that the child, who was not vaccinated, was malnourished and weighed 25 kg in July 2022. “He weighed 33 kg for 1.47 m, says Emmanuel Ludot. There are loads of kids who are 14 and growing later, gaining weight later. He wasn’t malnourished, he just did what he wanted: I crave pizza, I eat pizza, I crave meat, I only eat meat. “He’s a thin kid.” He is neither sickly, nor skeletal, nor anorexic ”, reports Thomas Koukézian, who however recognizes not having had access to the medical file. “I am very surprised by the media frenzy around this case, adds Me Koukézian. For me, it’s a trivial case. There is a significant discrepancy between what has been said and reality. »
“He lived by different rules”
Coming from a “well-to-do background”, a graduate in architecture and art history, the mother of the family had given birth in the Philippines. The birth had been declared to the French Embassy. The Frenchwoman then lived with her son in Paris before joining Rennes in 2020.
“It’s a very atypical file, considers Emmanuel Ludot. The social and cultural level of the mother is not the usual social level when it comes to abuse. He is not an emotionally deprived child like we find in all abuse cases, he is a child who has been loved too much. He lived with different rules but he was not in pain. The justice of Rennes did not understand that this file had to be managed like an atypical file and we had a deterioration of the situation: the child is placed in a social service, the mother found herself stigmatized and blamed like a bad mother and as she resists and does not fit into the format imposed on her, she is now sent back to correctional. It’s excessive. It was not necessary to remove the child brutally from the mother. He had to be left at home by imposing an educator who, through dialogue, would have brought things back to normal so that she could adopt another way of life. »
After the opening of a preliminary investigation, the mother was placed in police custody and then referred to the prosecution on Tuesday. She will be tried on October 5 before the criminal court.