Mom on trial for killing babies
2010-03-15 14:06
Coutances - A 38-year-old woman went on trial on Monday in northwest France, accused of killing six of her newborns and hiding the corpses in bags in her basement.
Celine Lesage faces life in prison if convicted by the jury in the courthouse in Valognes, near the Atlantic coast, on charges of aggravated homicide.
She was arrested in 2007 after her partner at the time discovered the corpses in plastic garbage bags in the basement of their apartment building in Valognes.
Her lawyer Veronique Carre said Lesage "does not contest the facts ... but isn't explaining them either". Several medical and psychological experts are expected to testify in the four-day trial.
No plea yet
Defendants are not required to enter a plea before a trial starts in France, but during questioning Lesage acknowledged strangling two of the newborns and suffocating four others, according to judicial documents.
The babies were born between 2000 and 2007.
She told investigators that the father of five of the newborns was an ex-boyfriend, who was detained for questioning after she was arrested in 2007.
She said the father of the sixth newborn was the partner who discovered the corpses.
At the time of her arrest, prosecutor Michel Garrandaux said she described giving birth alone in the apartment she shared with her partner at the time.
Case against father dropped
Garrandaux said the boyfriend "was far from unaware" of her pregnancies. However, the case against him was dropped.
The prosecutor contends that when the two split up in 2006, Lesage moved in with her new boyfriend, and brought the plastic bags from her old basement to her new one.
Lesage has a 14-year-old son.
Her trial comes after a more highly-publicised case involving a French woman convicted last year of murdering three of her newborn children.
Pregnancy denial
Veronique Courjault's husband discovered two of the corpses in a freezer while the two were living in South Korea.
During the trial psychiatrists testified that she suffered from a psychological condition known as "pregnancy denial".
Germany also has seen a string of similar cases.
In one, a woman was convicted of manslaughter in 2006 and sentenced to the maximum 15 years in prison for killing eight of her newborn babies and burying them in flower pots and a fish tank in the garden of her parents' home near the German-Polish border.
- SAPA