“The Court does not believe that she wanted to strike a mortal blow.” Thursday evening, the three judges of the Correctional Court condemned the young mother of 31 years, prosecuted for having caused injuries to her 5-month-old son, to a 2 year suspended prison sentence for simple and serious bodily harm. They admitted that the infant’s injuries – a cranial fracture and an epidural hematoma – can only originate “in a violent act”.
Faced with this particular family context – the Guinean woman lived in her companion’s apartment, where the latter’s legitimate wife and their three children also lived – the judges seriously explored the path of intervention by a third party. But the defendant was formal: no one other than her was left alone with the baby. “He fell out of bed” while she was out of the room to iron a sweater, she argued without blinking during her Wednesday hearing.
Fear as a motive
With this decision, the judges reject the mother’s version. If they did not believe it, it is because the experts’ conclusions are formal: a domestic accident is excluded in view of the force and energy necessary to cause such injuries. In other words, an act of abuse must have caused the trauma.
In this case, a factor was held against the young mother. After discovering her son in critical condition, she did not tell pediatric emergency physicians that her infant had fallen. Faced with the unknown, the doctors, suspecting meningitis, carried out a lumbar puncture which worsened the neurological state of the baby. The child is today physically handicapped. He will soon be 3 years old.
On this second part, the court considered that the mother exposed her child to life threatening danger, but that she acted out of fear. Fear of reprisals from her partner, who was present with her at the hospital, and who had been violent several times. The doctors also initially mentioned bacteria when the child was presented to them. “It reassured me, I thought they were going to cure him. And my child had no bumps or signs of his fall, “she said to justify her silence on the trauma. The judges here consider that the serious bodily harm was inflicted by negligence.
An invested mother
While the prosecutor Lyuska Hulliger had requested a partial stay which could not apply without the imprisonment of the accused, the judges faced with intelligence and humanity the pitfalls of this shattering trial. Their decision allows the young mother, who is living again with her disabled son, not to return to bars (she spent 18 days in Champ-Dollon after her arrest). Especially since a manager of the institution welcoming the little boy had described her as a “very present” and invested woman.
The unanimity among the lawyers for the parties testifies to the feeling of correctness left by the verdict. In defense, MeMichel Celi Vegas points to the essentials: “It was a question of protecting a family and the court decision goes in this direction.” As for MeVincent Spira, he had defined himself as “the voice of ‘a three year old boy’. As the child’s curator (and the complainant), the lawyer immediately stated that he did not imagine for a second that the mother wanted to take the life of her child. He also obtained that 80,000 francs of moral damages be paid to his protégé. At the end of the reading of the verdict, he welcomes a judgment “moderate, just and human which stigmatizes the acts while recognizing the suffering of the child and respecting that of the mother”.
Created: 09.01.2020, 8:09 p.m.
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