They were tied to high chairs. Young children were discovered in deplorable hygienic conditions at their home on August 30 in Noyelles-sous-Lens (Pas-de-Calais), franceinfo learned on Sunday September 4 from the public prosecutor of Béthune, confirming information from The voice of the North and Actu Pas-de-Calais. Their parents were arrested and then placed under judicial supervision, confirms the prosecutor to franceinfo. They will be tried next January.
According to The Voice of the North, ‘it’is an altercation between the father and the eldest son of the siblings” which triggered the report to social services. The young man, “24 years old”went to the police station when his father had ordered him to leave the house, according to the regional daily. When the police intervened, they found that two children aged two and five were “tied to high chairs, so they don’t move”and in a “deplorable state of hygiene”, describes the prosecutor.
At the end of their police custody, the parents, a 44-year-old man and a 40-year-old woman, were presented to the Béthune court. They are suspected of “subtraction by ascendant from legal obligations” and of “violence against a 15-year-old minor by ascendant”, without ITT (total incapacity for work). Some of the children are subject to a placement order, the prosecutor told franceinfo. The family has a total of ten children aged 4 months to 24 years, seven of whom are minors. “The older ones have experienced the same thing as the younger ones: spanking, binding and deprivation of liberty”specifies Actu Pas-de-Calais.
When the police arrived, they “found that two children aged two and five” were “attached to high chairs, so that they did not move”, and in a “deplorable state of hygiene”, describes the prosecutor. Nevertheless “we can not say” that they were covered in feces, as some media reported, he said. However, children do not present “no traces of serious abuse that would have caused scars”.
“For us, it’s not a closed family, reacted the mayor of Noyelles-sous-Lens, Alain Roger, to La Voix du Nord. We see them regularly, the children go to kindergarten and primary school and we see the mother driving them to school. They are not registered with the CCAS of the municipality. It gives goosebumps to hear the fate reserved for children…”