French woman sentenced for abandoning child she adopted in Congo

A French woman was sentenced to 10 months suspended prison sentence for neglect of a minor by the Draguignan prosecutor's office. According to Var Matin , this forty-something native of Fréjus (Var) had abandoned a child she had just adopted in Congo.

After launching procedures in 2015, Ingrid L. obtained in 2017 the full adoption of Michel, taken in 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. You had to constantly watch him. All the time, every minute. I felt he would ultimately be better off at the orphanage than with me." , tried to justify Ingrid L. Arguments which did not convince the criminal court of Draguignan which also pronounced with regard to this social worker in a service of educational action in open environment, a prohibition to exercise 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 went through a trauma"

Ingrid L's lawyer, Me Juliette Bouzereau, pleaded that "the prevention of neglect" did not hold up to the extent that "the health and safety of the child" were "assured", this one 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 French stranded in Brazzaville. "It would be better, rather than placement in a foster home, to seize a family court judge so that he can pronounce the deprivation of parental authority and that he is then placed in a foster family", estimated the lawyer.

"This child, who can no longer be adopted, is not an ordinary case, he has experienced a specific trauma after a first abandonment at the age of eight months and a new one when his mother [the condemned Frenchwoman] has her. abandoned at the orphanage in front of all the other kids who say to him today 'saw you, the white mother did not want you' ", tells 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).