• In Rennes, a mother is suspected of having cut off her 14-year-old son from the world since his birth.
  • Doctors discovered a malnourished teenager who had difficulty speaking. After a report, the boy was placed in July 2022.
  • The mother will be tried for "evasion of her legal obligations" and "deprivation of care".

In the wake of the revelation of proceedings against a 48-year-old woman from Rennes on grounds of "evasion of her legal obligations" and "deprivation of care" vis-à-vis her 14-year-old son, the lawyers of the mother of the family dispute the accusations of abuse. The teenager, who lived alone with his mother, was removed from her in July 2022 and placed with child welfare since doctors were reported following a hospital consultation due to discomfort. The child had significant thinness and communication difficulties. The newspaper Ouest-France, which revealed the case, reports that the teenager was hidden since birth and lived in seclusion.

"He was not hidden or locked up," says Emmanuel Ludot, a lawyer. He went out, he went to the library, he went to the museum, he was not out of 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 he is hidden," insists Thomas Koukézian, another lawyer for the family. The teenager was not going to school, he was homeschooled.

"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," says Emmanuel Ludot. They had a mode of operation and a way of life that was fusional. It can be good but it can also be deleterious since arrived at adolescence children need to take their autonomy. This is where, indeed, the justice considered that conducting this fusional relationship, not being schooled, was a form of abuse. But it doesn't stick. »

The two lawyers also deny the fact that the child, who was not vaccinated, is malnourished and weighed 25 kg in July 2022. "He weighed 33 kg for 1.47 m," says Emmanuel Ludot. There are lots of young people who are 14 years old and grow up later, who gain weight later. He wasn't malnourished, it's just that he did what he wanted: I want pizza, I eat pizza, I crave meat, I only eat meat. "He's a thin child. He is neither sickly, nor skeletal, nor anorexic, "says Thomas Koukézian, who admits, however, that he did not have access to the medical file. "I am very surprised by the media hype around this case," adds Koukézian. For me this is a trivial issue. There is a significant discrepancy between what has been said and reality. »

"He lived with different rules"

Coming from a "wealthy background", graduated in architecture and art history, the mother of the family had given birth in the Philippines. The birth had been declared to the embassy in France. The Frenchwoman then lived with her son in Paris before joining Rennes in 2020.

"This is a very atypical case," says 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 deficient child as we find in all cases of abuse, he is a child who has been loved too much. He lived with different rules but he was not suffering. The justice of Rennes did not understand that this file had to be managed as 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 as a bad mother and as she resists and does not fit into the format imposed on her she is now sent back to corrections. This is excessive. The child should not be brutally taken away from the mother. It was necessary to leave her at home by imposing an educator who, through dialogue, would have led to the restoration of things 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 prosecutor's office on Tuesday. She will be tried on 5 October before the Criminal Court.

  • Miscellaneous facts Rennes
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  • Child abuse