Sandrine P. affirms, her daughter Amandine “was not deprived of food”, despite the medical examiner’s report. During the hearing, another of his daughters revealed that she had already been “forced to drink toilet water”.
In the dock, the mother of Amandine, 13, found dead in 2020 in Montblanc, near Béziers in Hérault, says: “I don’t know why she wasn’t eating (…) he didn’t “There’s no explanation, she wasn’t deprived of food, no one did that to her.”
Sandrine P., 54, has been on trial since Monday, January 20, 2025 before the Montpellier Assize Court and faces life imprisonment. She insists “not knowing” why Amandine was found, four years earlier, dead of starvation, naked in the storage room of the family home. She only weighed 28 kilos and was 1m55 tall.
“She was going to die. It was her fate, it was engraved”
Statements which had the gift of annoying the judge, Eric Emmanuelidis. “We know why. The coroner replied that she died of starvation and septicemia. But the question is how: either she committed suicide, but that would be surprising for a 13-year-old child . Either you don’t give her food and you refuse to let her eat!” he said. The accused then evokes a complicated period between her and her companion, indicating that she assumed at the same time “the role of dad and mom, I was overwhelmed” she concedes.
If this type of situation and bad times are commonplace in the life of a couple and particularly for separated couples, the judge specifies that “it does not necessarily end with the death of a child, in these conditions , with festering wounds In any case, pardon the expression, she was going to die, it was engraved, inscribed. a little out of control'”, he explains.
The mother admits “not having been able to see”
Amandine’s half-sister, Cassandra, reveals that she was already “forced to drink toilet water”, while another of Sandrine P.’s children admits that their mother was “used to making them punish”, but Amandine “no”, agrees the mother of the family. She still concedes that there were punishments, “yes it’s true”, but “she behaved badly”, she says, as if to justify her potential actions.
Several elements still bothered the president during the hearing on Monday, January 20. “Why was she in that storage room?” he asks. According to the mother, her daughter “wanted to get started”. “Would she have wanted to stand in this storage room completely naked?” the president then retorted. The moment for Sandrine P. to recognize a first and only wrong according to her until now: “not having been able to see, not having knew how to react”, she concedes. So, how can we explain such actions against her daughter, if she were to be convicted for the acts with which she is accused? Namely:“acts of torture and barbarity leading to death”.
“The diabolical representation of the father in everyday life”
Marie-Chantal Bonnet-Cathala, psychologist who heard Sandrine P. four times, highlights her delicate relationship with Amandine’s father, Frédéric F., present in the front row that day. She has several times described him as “the man of her life”, and is “not sure” that the latter “has mourned her relationship with him”.
His “hatred against Frédéric F. moved onto the body of the child, which became the place of projection of the feeling of hostility, of hatred against the father”. The child would then have become “the diabolical representation of the father on a daily basis” and their relationship “a struggle to the death between mother and child”, until the factual death of Amandine, in atrocious conditions.