The nine-year-old child lived alone in a cold flat in southwest France for two years after his mother abandoned him to live with her lover. The small child was left to live alone in an apartment near Angoulême in Nersac, France, when his mother moved three miles away. The mother, 39, was given a six-month prison sentence last week for endangering her child. The boy’s father, who resides in a separate town, was not prosecuted.
Between 2020 and 2022, the abandoned child experienced periods without heat, hot water, or electricity.
He got by by washing in cold water and using sleeping bags and blankets for warmth. To survive, he resorted to gathering tomatoes from a nearby balcony and going door-to-door asking neighbors for food. Concerned neighbors ultimately contacted law enforcement, and the child was taken into protective custody.
The child was neglected and lived in isolation, but no one was aware of it as he attended school. in part because he completed his assignments, maintained a clean room, and received good grades. The town’s mayor, Barbara Couturier, explained that the child seemed to put on a shield. giving the appearance that everything was well. She went on, “I think he shielded himself with assurance that everything is OK.”
The neighbors noticed something wasn’t quite right when they first noticed the issue.
The boy’s mother ignored the neighbors’ worries when she learned about them; she told them she was taking care of her son and asked them to stay out of her private matters. The villagers claimed that because the child was capable of taking care of himself, no one noticed the negligence.
During his two years of loneliness, the abandoned boy took to collecting tomatoes from a nearby balcony and asking the neighbors for sustenance. After the concerned neighbors called the authorities, the small child was eventually placed in foster care.
A student claimed that the youngster spent most of his time at home, rarely left the house, and often ate and took the bus by himself. The mother’s testimony that she lived with her son was disproved throughout the trial using cellphone data that showed her irregular attendance at the flat. He told his friends that he went alone on the bus and ate his food. He didn’t always remain inside or go out. The pupil stated.
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Transforming guilt into alleviation
The neighbors felt guilty for not seeing the issue sooner. blaming modern life’s anonymity for contributing to the neglect’s persistence. “When a family and a community were around, it didn’t matter too much if a mother mistreated her child because everyone in the village and the rest of the family took care of the youngster. It’s not the same anymore,” a resident said.
What is the desertion policy of the University of Nottingham?
Ten EU countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and the UK) glaringly lack a clear legal definition for child abandonment. The notion of child abandonment is ambiguous and imprecise, which makes it challenging to tackle this issue both practically and academically.
Child abandonment is a significant factor in the demand for institutional care for children under three. Comparatively, it was revealed that just 4% of children in Western European institutions had been abandoned. In comparison, Central and Eastern Europe had a far larger percentage—32%. Romania, Hungary, and Latvia had the highest percentages of abandoned children in institutional care. In contrast, the UK, Denmark, and Norway all said that child abandonment was rare.
Several actions are being taken by EU countries to end child desertion. These programs include:
- Social support
- Daycare centers
- Mother-child pairs
- Services for family planning
- services of counseling for mothers and/or families
- Programs for financial assistance aimed at at-risk families and child identity
- “Training centers” for parents
- Helplines providing assistance to mothers who require it
- Advice on how to stop child abandonment in maternity hospital
- Social workers’ presence in maternity units
- Hospital employees receive training on how to identify high-risk situations, manage them, and offer supportive counseling.
