Sandrine Pissara, Amandine’s mother, admitted this Tuesday to the facts of “violence” and “acts of torture and barbarity” which she was accused of, after the death of her daughter in 2020 in Hérault. She faces life imprisonment.
Tuesday January 21, 2025, Amandine’s mother, accused of having starved and caused the death of her 13-year-old daughter in 2020, finally admitted the facts. The teenager was found near Béziers, in Hérault, at the family home, in a deplorable state, she weighed only 28 kilos and was 1.55 m tall. For four years, Sandrine Pissara has denied the facts for which she faces life imprisonment. Before the Montpellier Assize Court, where she was laconic and even silent since the start of her trial this week, she finally broke down after the broadcast of a key element.
“Recognize that you’re just a criminal, own it!”
During this Tuesday’s hearing, Amandine’s brother, Jérémy, 29, spoke about the violence he also suffered. After dropping a “big ceramic pot”, Sandrine Pissara, his mother, strangled him, then “I was served a flageolet on my plate, it was humiliating”, he remembers. He also says he was “threatened with death” by his mother.
“Recognize that you are just a criminal, take responsibility!”, he told the accused, while the mother still denied the facts, claiming not to understand “of what” her daughter, Amandine, had died .
An unbearable audio recording
The president of the court, Eric Emmanuelidis then decided to broadcast an audio recording which will change everything. A sound, recorded by neighbors in 2019, alerted and shocked by the cries coming from the house of Sandrine Pissara and Jean-Michel Cros, her companion.
A hard and trying recording in which we hear Amandine’s screams and cries: “Ouch, ouch, stop, not that, I’m hurting…”, as well as her mother’s voice. The young victim also begs her mother, whom she calls “Madame”. A recording tinged with the sound of blows which turned this trial upside down, when the session was about to be suspended.
“Yes, I admit”
“Do you recognize the torture and barbaric acts from the start of confinement until the death of your daughter, defined by the judge as isolation, repeated humiliation, the fact of having left her naked, starving , naked recluse in a closed room where she was relegated for weeks without anyone being able to access her?”, the president will solemnly ask Amandine’s mother.
It was at this moment that the latter confessed: “Yes, I recognize them”, she will respond before the Montpellier Assize Court, Tuesday January 21. “This is the first time I’ve seen you cry,” retorts the president. Jean-Michel Cros – the companion who faces thirty years in prison for having “deprived his stepdaughter of care or food” and not having come to her aid – also recognizes the facts. “I have enormous guilt over this,” he conceded.