What we know about the 9-year-old child left to his own devices and abandoned by his mother in Charente

Tuesday January 16, the Angoulême criminal court sentenced a mother to eighteen months in prison for abandoning her 9-year-old son.

Smiling, very good student, clean and well behaved, it was difficult to imagine that this 9 year old boy lived alone. His mother, sentenced on Tuesday January 16 by the Angoulême criminal court to eighteen months in prison, twelve of which were suspended, for “abandonment of a minor compromising his safety”, had left him to his own devices in their apartment Nersac HLM, reports the Free Charente.

For two years, the boy subsisted on cold canned goods and cakes, and was even forced to steal tomatoes from a neighbor’s balcony. He lived completely independently in this apartment which was not always heated. “There is a sad and frightening side. This child had no way of washing himself with hot water!”, noted the prosecutor in charge of the case according to the regional daily. His mother “took him to the local grocery store where, with the CCAS vouchers [Centre communal d’action sociale]she could buy him cakes or frozen foods,” Antoine Beneytou, journalist in charge of news at Free Charente.

The neighbors, who started to help him by giving him food, ended up notifying the police. The child confirmed to the judge that he had first lived with his older brother, then alone. At school, no one noticed anything. Since then, the little boy has been placed in a foster family. Described as “very mature” by one of the educators who met him, the boy, now 11 years old, refuses to see his mother. The civil party’s lawyer, Cindy Gaschet, fears “dramatic consequences”.