The past has caught up with a mother of three who pleaded guilty to extreme abuse, including forcing them to eat their feces while sometimes locking them up for days with only a bucket to relieve themselves.
“They were so short of food that the oldest already chased away a bird and put it in the microwave. The house was unsanitary, his sister was a neglected child who smelled of urine,” explained M.e Mylène Brown of the Crown, this Tuesday, at the Salaberry-de-Valleyfield courthouse.
Sitting opposite the judge, Pauline Richer, 64, did not say a word while listening to a summary of the abuse she subjected her children Damien, Mélanie and Geneviève Castagner, in the 1980s.
At their request, the judge lifted the publication ban on their identity, so that the unworthy mother can now be named.
Abandonment
According to the summary of facts, the abuse began in 1981, when Damien was only 5 years old. And in his memories, he was never able to drink from a bottle, his mother preferring to give him soft drinks. As for the food, it was always rotten.
“A neighbor fed him, it was at his house that Damien could go to wash from time to time,” he explained to the court.
The mother, for her part, could go away for days, leaving her babies to their own devices. She then locked them in a room with a bucket for their needs.
It was the oldest who escaped and went in search of food for his younger sisters.
“She is a mother who had nothing maternal,” Geneviève, the youngest of the children, told the police when filing her complaint.
And when Richer was there, she punished them by making them eat their feces or beating them, especially her second child.
“Mélanie was the scapegoat,” summarized M.e Brown, adding that she sometimes took refuge in a dog kennel. She’s already been thrown down a two-story bed. When the mother returned from the hospital, she took off the cast.”
They get up
The children’s abuse continued until 1984, when the DPJQ placed the children in three different foster families. But to this day, their pain is still raw.
“I wondered why my mother didn’t want me…I learned to live with abandonment, I hoped it was a nightmare,” one of the girls said.
The oldest, for his part, wrote a poignant poem in which he said he was “broken and torn”.
“But even with everything she has done, I love her the same,” he added, echoing his sisters’ thoughts.
The three, however, assured that they did everything to keep their heads high and move forward in life despite their terrible childhood.
“I apologize,” Richer stammered, following these testimonies.
Guilty of assault and child abandonment, the unworthy mother received two years less a day in home confinement, followed by three years’ probation. This sentence, suggested both by the Crown and by Me Jacques Vinet of the defense may appear lenient, but it satisfies the three victims, who see their mother’s guilty plea as a “Christmas present”.