Staff at the Centre Hospitalier Emile Mayrisch (CHEM) in Esch-sur-Alzette noticed multiple red flags fairly early on.
After noticing “many elements that were not like they usually are with other people,” the midwife contacted the CHEM’s social worker. The mother ignored the midwife’s advice, and the baby was still wearing some of the same clothes two days later during a check-up.
The social worker never met the defendant but reported the case to the Central Social Welfare Service (SCAS) for a variety of reasons, including the fact that she had already lost custody of her other five children and was divorced and living with a man who was not the biological father of the child.
Only three days after the birth of the missing baby, the SCAS requested a provisional custody order from a juvenile court judge. The employee in charge of the case explained that the staff did not have any other options. The defendant was already known to the SCAS, which had previously offered her assistance with the upbringing of her future child. SCAS workers also met the mother before she gave birth to Bianka.
One month later, the judge granted the request, leading the Esch-sur-Alzette judicial police to visit the defendant’s home and discover that the child had disappeared.
The court also showed footage of the mother being interrogated by the examining magistrate in the summer of 2015. The video showed the defendant becoming increasingly stubborn when she was asked repeatedly where the baby was. “You like to steal the children of good mothers, that’s what’s really going on,” was one of her statements. She assured the judge that Bianka was well and that she was “with a friend.”
