France: Frozen babies don’t die naturally

Two newborns found in a freezer at a woman’s home in the south of France were “probably” dead after birth, Avignon prosecutor Florence Galtier said on Monday, adding that their deaths were “not natural”. The day after they discovered, 1^R December, in a Bedouin village, The woman – a 41-year-old mother – was charged with “killing a minor”. Under 15 years. It is yet to be confirmed whether she is the mother of the newborn children.

An autopsy revealed that they were two girls who had been born and breathed. “Both children are viable, they are not dead children”, Avignon’s lawyer continued. He emphasized the fact that their deaths were “not of natural origin”: in one of the two children, “cranial and intraocular trauma” was diagnosed and would be the cause of death. But “we don’t know if it was violence, a fall, carelessness or something else,” Florence Galtier said.

As of now, the parents of the children are unknown and there is no indication that they are twins, the magistrate said. It was a call from a man in the gendarmerie that led to this gruesome discovery. No indication is given of the relationship between this witness and the family concerned.

Cases of babies frozen in the family home were not uncommon in the French judicial years, sometimes marked by a change in the mother’s judgment or denial of a pregnancy unknown to those around them.

In March, a 30-year-old woman was charged after she found two frozen babies in her home. In 2015, the bodies of five children were found in a refrigerator, and their mother was sentenced to eight years in prison. A woman sentenced to eight years in prison for killing three of her newborn children in 2009 has been found frozen in South Korea, where she was deported with her husband.