A 23-year-old woman is on trial for abandoning the baby she had just given birth. The newborn baby died 11 days later.
The delivery lasted less than half an hour. Gaëlle C., then barely 20 years old, suffered from severe stomach aches on the morning of June 13, 2014, before taking her flight to Fort-de-France (Martinique) from Orly-Sud. They were actually contractions.
The young woman then went to the toilet at the airport, where she gave birth to a boy. Less than an hour later, she was on her plane… without her baby, whom she had abandoned in the bathroom.
She is now prosecuted for neglect of a minor under 15 years of age followed by death, and appears before the Assize Court of Val-de-Marne from this Friday, reports The Parisian.
Hypothermia
The newborn, whom a cleaning lady had found an hour after giving birth on the floor of the toilet, had indeed died 11 days later, despite being taken care of at the Kremlin-Bicêtre hospital. Upon admission, he was already suffering from severe neurological damage caused by severe hypothermia.
Quickly identified thanks to video surveillance, the young woman was arrested on her return to France, three months later. During her interrogation, she had recognized the facts and delivered the identity of the father, initially advancing a denial of pregnancy: panicking, she would have left her child, hoping that someone would find out.
She faces 30 years in prison
A version on which she subsequently returned. Some of her relatives had found her changed, recalls the Parisian, and even asked her if she wasn’t pregnant. She then denied. To an ex-boyfriend, she even explained that she had been raped and had an abortion.
Successive and shaky versions that did not convince. The trial should give the young woman the opportunity to provide a coherent and more complete explanation of the facts. Gaëlle C. faces up to 30 years in prison.
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