French mother on trial after two babies found in freezer
Pastor Dale Morgan
*French mother on trial after two babies found in freezer*
Husband says Veronique Courjault, who confessed after initially denying
pregnancies, has psychological disorder
* Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 7 June 2009 19.00 BST
It is a mystery that has gripped France. A well-educated and well-liked
expat family were living in Seoul with their two young sons. One day,
the father found the corpses of two newborn babies in the family
freezer. Baffled, he called the police. The couple flatly denied the
babies were theirs, but a DNA test proved otherwise. The story inspired
a novel by François Mitterrand's daughter, a national outpouring and a
new focus on a spate of infanticides across France over the past decade.
As Veronique Courjault, the mother of the frozen babies, goes on trial
in France for murder on Tuesday facing possible life imprisonment, the
nation is braced for a new round of soul-searching over the
psychological difficulties that can hit some pregnant women. Judges will
have to decide whether Courjault was in denial of her pregnancies or was
conscious of what she was doing. She has spent two and a half years on
remand in prison and her family insists she is not a danger to society.
In 2006, the Courjaults were living in a smart ex-pat villa on a
high-security estate in the South Korean capital. Jean-Louis Courjault
worked as an engineer for a multinational company and was often away
from home. His wife, described as a devoted mother to her sons, aged
nine and 11, did yoga with other mothers and had worked as a classroom
assistant at the local French school. On 23 July 2006, after his wife
and sons had left for their annual summer trip to France, Courjault
returned to Seoul on business. He bought fish and went down to the
family's basement freezer which he wouldn't normally open. Therehe found
the corpses.
Courjault was allowed to fly back to France to be with his wife. Holding
hands, they held a press conference insisting they were not the parents
and were puzzled by the find. Weeks later, DNA tests proved they were
the parents, and both were arrested.
Under questioning by French police, Veronique confessed to hiding two
pregnancies from her husband in 2002 and 2003, giving birth alone in the
bathroom before strangling each baby and storing them in the freezer.
She also confessed to killing another newborn while the couple still
lived in France in 1999, disposing of the body in the family's
fireplace. She told psychiatrists she had not felt the babies move in
her womb during pregnancy. "For me, it was never children, it was a part
of me, a prolongation of myself that I killed," she said. She explained
feeling out of her depth at the thought of having more children. Earlier
this year, a judge found Jean-Louis Courjault innocent of knowing
anything about the pregnancies or the babies' deaths. After the verdict,
Courjault said: "Another battle is now starting against society's
received ideas. Society has to admit that not all pregnancies are happy.
My wife certainly has a problem of a psychological order."
Now living in France and raising the couple's two sons, he has forgiven
his wife and wants her home from prison to rejoin the family.
France's huge interest in the case was reflected in a 2007 novel by
Mazarine Pingeot, daughter of François Mitterrand, which focused on a
mother who hides her dead babies in a freezer. The Courjault family
accused her of exploitation, but Pingeot argued that the case was not
unique and the universaltheme of mothers who kill their children had
been a "fascinating crime since mythology".