A 48-year-old woman appears before the Rennes criminal court. When hospitalized in July 2022, the child weighed only 27 kg. He has since been placed with Child Welfare.
Was there any mistreatment on the part of Stéphanie, 48, towards her 14-year-old son? This is what the criminal court of Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine) will try to determine, Thursday October 5, which will have to rule on a case that became media news last May after the publication of an article by West France claiming that a mother hid the existence of her starving son since his birth. Custody of the teenager, baptized Pierre-Alexandre in the media (a pseudonym), was taken away from him in the summer of 2022: he has since been placed in a child welfare home. Stéphanie denies any negligence and did not hesitate to defend herself, openly, on television sets.
Born in the Philippines to an unknown father
The case began in July 2022, when Stéphanie presented herself to the emergency room with her son, who, according to her, had been taken ill. On the set of the show “Touche pas à mon poste”, she will explain that he was “victim of anaphylactic shock” after ingesting throat lozenges.
From the outset, the doctors were alarmed by the extreme thinness of the teenager who weighed 27 kg and measured 1.47 m, according to the Rennes prosecutor’s office, or half the average weight of a young person of his age. Worried, they contacted social services. According to West Francethey also discover a “a delay in intellectual development” and difficulty expressing themselves.
The doctors entrust Pierre-Alexandre to the children in danger pediatric reception unit (UAPED). The pediatricians and child psychiatrists who make up the team very quickly decide to make a legal report. The authorities realize that the teenager does not have a doctor. When he was born in the Philippines, to an unknown father, he was declared to the French embassy but subsequently never went to school and was not vaccinated.
On July 4, 2022, the public prosecutor’s office removed custody of her son from Stéphanie, via a provisional placement order with Child Welfare, which will then be renewed. The teenager’s mother was placed in police custody for the first time and a preliminary investigation was immediately opened by the prosecution. Ten months later, in May 2023, she was again detained and placed under judicial supervision, pending her trial.
No request for home instruction
But Stéphanie denounces “the judgment of doctors” and ensures that you always have “given enough food to eat” to his son. On France Bleu, she swears that the child “never went to sleep on an empty stomach.” The latter, that Le Figaro was able to meet, assures for his part: “At home, if I was feeling peckish, I could take whatever I wanted.”
According to Emmanuel Ludot, the mother’s lawyer, contacted by franceinfo, Pierre-Alexandre “defends his mother tooth and nail”. According to the defense, “the school system did not suit her and Stéphanie had enough intellectual background to be able to deal with it”. The latter opted for home education, without having requested authorization from National Education.
However, she claims to have educated him independently. “We were very often at the library, the museum, the theater, the cinema, going to see exhibitions”she described on BFMTV. “He has acquired skills which are sometimes superior to a child who goes to school, and there are certain subjects where, not having received a school education strictly speaking, he has less knowledge”she continued on the set of “Touche pas à mon poste”.
As for her language delay, she assured in Cyril Hanouna’s show that her son “is on the contrary very well known for having a very good level of speech” And “very comfortable in dialogue”. “He has specious phrasing, vocabulary, he is very funny and known as an atypical boy”slips on his side Emmanuel Ludot.
“He went out every day, he had friends his age, friends’ children.”
Stéphanie, Pierre-Alexandre’s motheron the set of “Touche pas à mon poste”
According to information from West FrancePierre-Alexandre would have spent most of his time locked up at home, which the teenager and his mother strongly deny. “I had a very rich environment, I went to antique dealers, to booksellers, I did activities that I loved”he assured the Figaroadding that he “participated in Pokémon card tournaments, for example. It’s in these kinds of places that I made friends my age”.
A decision to place him confirmed several times
It is not, according to Emmanuel Ludot, a context of “moral and social misery”his client being “from a wealthy background” and has no “will to conceal” her child. “But he has a fear of the outside, a fear of the world and therefore a Manichean vision of the world”he analyzed the lawyer in May with AFP. “I take great care of my child. We just live simply and happily, because we have the right to our life, like everyone else”Stéphanie also defended herself on France Bleu.
“He is a child who is very close to his mother, with whom there is no break, no emancipation, he remained a little boy”details Emmanuel Ludot, describing a “fusional relationship”.
“Of course his mother has a role to play in this state of affairs, but does this fall under the criminal classification? The whole question is whether there was any fault on her part.”
Emmanuel Ludot, Stéphanie’s lawyerat franceinfo
Contacted by franceinfo, the public prosecutor of Rennes, Philippe Astruc, cannot say more about “which led to the placement” of Pierre-Alexandre, but ensures “have very detailed elements” and insists that the teenager “presented a state of major danger”. “No less than four legal decisions were taken by three different authorities”who considered that the situation justified the placement, he notes.
The children’s judge in fact confirmed the placement order of the Rennes public prosecutor’s office by a judgment of July 18, 2022. The Rennes Court of Appeal then made the same decision in a judgment of February 13, 2023. “The children’s judge, in a long, particularly reasoned judgment, extended this measure with a judgment of April 26, 2023”notes the prosecutor.
Stéphanie is therefore preparing to be judged for “evasion by a parent of his legal obligations compromising the health, safety, morality or education of his child” and “deprivation of care or food compromising the health of a minor under 15 years of age by ascendant or person having authority”. She faces a sentence of seven years in prison and a fine of 100,000 euros.