The 39-year-old woman was sentenced to six months of electronic surveillance by the Angoulême criminal court, according to the Charente Libre newspaper.
Her son was abandoned at the age of nine in 2020, living off cakes and cold tinned food, occasionally pilfering tomatoes from a neighbouring balcony in the flat he inhabited in Nersac. According to reports, the dwelling was unheated and had no electricity, forcing the child to sleep under three blankets and wash using cold water.
For two years, the boy survived on his own, somehow still managing to attend school, where staff said he was a good student.
Neighbours helped the child to feed himself, before one anonymously reported the schoolboy’s harrowing circumstances to the authorities in 2022.
The investigation revealed the mother was living some five kilometres away from her son, in a home with her partner in Sireuil. The court heard that she visited the boy from time to time to bring him food.
Forensic analysis of her phone records confirmed that the woman did not share a home with her son, nor did she oversee his journey to school or elsewhere.
Although the woman denied the allegations in court, her son’s neighbours testified that the child lived alone in the flat, where police reported finding an empty fridge and no signs of adult clothing.
The boy has since been placed with a foster family and has indicated that he no longer wishes to have contact with his mother.
The court issued a sentence of 18 months in prison - six of which will be under electronic surveillance, while the remaining 12 were suspended - for the abandonment of a minor. The mother’s visiting rights were suspended, according to the plaintiff’s lawyer.
