It is a chilling story, reported by our colleagues from France Blue : this Tuesday, September 11, 2018, a 37-year-old mother was sentenced by the Mont-de-Marsan correctional court (New Aquitaine) for having administered anxiolytics and neuroleptics to her 2-year-old daughter.
She was sentenced to 6 months suspended prison sentence; her husband, meanwhile, received a suspended 4-month prison sentence for not having alerted the authorities. The facts took place between September 2016 and January 2017: to “calm” her daughter, the woman administered “half a pill of Lexomil per week, in a bottle of cola”.
Medicines formally prohibited for children and prescribed on prescription
It was a social worker who sounded the alarm at the beginning of 2017: she noticed suspicious traces on the little girl’s body and found her behavior unusual – she seemed “often asleep”. An analysis of the child’s hair reveals regular consumption of Lexomil and Tercian, two drugs usually prescribed for anxiety or mental disorders – schizophrenia, in particular.
Lexomil and Tercian are strictly prohibited for children before the age of 6 and these drugs are only available on prescription, with a short prescription due (in particular) to numerous side effects.
More worrying perhaps: the condemned parents were not at their first attempt. In 2013, they had already dealt with justice for similar facts concerning two other of their five children: a psychiatrist had then detected an “alteration of the personality” in the mother.
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