A French woman sentenced for having abandoned a child she had adopted in the Congo
A French forty-year-old from Fréjus (Var) was sentenced by the Draguignan prosecutor's office to 10 months suspended imprisonment on Thursday, December 17 for neglect of a minor. She had abandoned an orphan child after adopting him in the Congo.
A Frenchwoman was given a 10-month suspended prison sentence for neglecting a minor by the Draguignan prosecutor's office. According to Var Matin , this forty-year-old from Fréjus (Var) had abandoned a child she had just adopted in the Congo.
After launching the process in 2015, Ingrid L. obtained the full adoption of Michel in 2017, taken in at only 8 months by an orphanage. He obtained French nationality in 2017. However, after meeting him in 2018, the Frenchwoman abandoned him in Brazzaville (Republic of Congo). The child, now 8 years old, was then found on the steps of a church.
"During the week I spent with him, he was unmanageable. He had to be watched constantly. All the time, every minute. I felt that he would finally be better at the orphanage than with me" , tried to justify herself Ingrid L. Arguments which did not convince the correctional court of Draguignan which also pronounced with regard to this social worker in an educational action service in an open environment, a ban on exercising a professional activity in contact with minors, thus depriving her of her job. La Fréjusienne also said that she did not realize that the adoption procedure she had launched was final.
“He experienced a trauma”
Ingrid L's lawyer, Me Juliette Bouzereau, pleaded that "the prevention of abandonment" did not hold insofar as "the health and safety of the child" were "assured", the latter having been left in the orphanage where he was already welcomed. Me Muriel Gestas, who defends the interests of the child, asks for personalized treatment for this orphan who is now a Frenchman stranded in Brazzaville. "It would be better, rather than placement in a home, to seize a family affairs judge so that he can pronounce the forfeiture of parental authority and that he is then placed in a foster family", estimated the lawyer.
"This child, who is no longer adoptable, is not an average case, he experienced a specific trauma after a first abandonment at the age of eight months and a new one when his mother [the condemned Frenchwoman] took him. abandoned at the orphanage in front of all the other kids who say to him today 'you saw, the white mom she didn't want you'", says Me Gestas.
According to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 421 children were adopted abroad by French nationals or foreigners residing in France in 2019. Congo is the fifth country of origin (behind Vietnam, Colombia, Thailand and Haiti).