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A WOMAN WHO claimed that witchcraft caused her to leave her baby to drown on a beach in northern France has been sentenced to 20 years in jail.
Fabienne Kabou, 39, had faced life imprisonment for the 19 November, 2013, murder, but the court deemed that she suffered from impaired judgement.
The court in the town of Saint-Omer, near Calais, also ordered Kabou to undergo psychological treatment as it wrapped up her headline-grabbing trial.
Her lawyer, Fabienne Roy-Nansion, expressed dismay over an “extremely heavy” verdict reached after the five-day trial and said Kabou planned to appeal.
The woman of Senegalese origin confessed to travelling from her home near Paris to the town of Berck on the English Channel with the aim of drowning Adelaide, who was 13 months old.
Kabou said she checked the local tide chart before abandoning the baby on the beach as the tide was coming in.
Prawn fishermen found Adelaide’s lifeless body the next morning.
Kabou, who grew up in a well-off Catholic family, left Senegal to study philosophy and architecture in Paris, where she fell in love with Michel Lafon, a sculptor 30 years her senior.
Described by her lawyer as highly intelligent, she told the court she had no other explanation for her acts but witchcraft.
“Nothing makes sense in this story. What interest could I have in tormenting myself, lying, killing my daughter?” she asked. “I spoke of sorcery and I am not joking. Even a stupid person would not do what I did.”
Witchcraft claim rejected
Kabou said she carried out the murder “perfectly mechanically, as if a part of me was anaesthetised” and returned home the next day “with the attitude of someone who has just gone shopping”.
She said she had spent some €40,000 consulting various “witchdoctors and healers” before carrying out the murder, and that she had suffered hallucinations.
However, a lawyer for a children’s group that was a civil party to the case has accused Kabou of citing witchcraft and her native culture as a defence strategy.
An IT expert testified that he found no references to witchcraft on her computer.
A court psychiatrist, Paul Bensussan, said her act was possibly triggered by a deep depression related to having the child.
“Infanticide committed by the mother is often underpinned by a psychiatric pathology,” he said. “In most cases the mother is deeply depressed” and sees her act as a kind of “altruistic suicide”, saving her child from suffering.
Kabou has said Lafon never wanted the child and questioned whether he was even the father.
Her lawyer said the child was born in the couple’s home and was never registered. No one close to the couple, not even Kabou’s mother, knew of her existence.
A DNA test carried out after Kabou’s arrest confirmed Lafon’s paternity.
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They are back…
The recession is officially over…
Hard to beat a good bumblebee monitoring scheme workshop!
Well, I’m pleased to see the return of the Southern Cuckoo Bumblebee. Ireland just wasn’t the same without him. Long may he live!
That’s got to bee good news , I know I’m buzzing about it !
Great book tip for y’all – A Sting in the Tale by Dave Goulson. Fascinating creatures, and I didn’t pay bumblebees a blind bit of attention down the years. Goulson will amaze you with what we know about them and intrigue/frustrate you with what we don’t. A must read for anyone into nature.
Thanks Winston. Amazon says it’ll be delivered next week! Love bees! Recently got a hive of honey bees on our farm and they’re thriving.
bee-jesus
Well spotted by the lad in St Endas park. Most folks would have swatted it.
Swatted it? Don’t know which side their bread is buttered on those people. Wipe out humans – nature goes on, nay thrives. Wipe out bees – Goodnight Irene – planet earth would be basically Mars with oceans in a short space of time.
I swear that type has been flying around the gardens in my house the last 10 years, looks the same anyway.. Big b***tards
Actually Shirley the one I saw recently in Cavan with a pin pushed through it was quite tiny.
The buzz around town is that this is easily the oldest bee in Ireland!!!!!!
It’s amazing what you find if you actually go out and look, ‘extinct’ frogs, monkeys, birds, fish all just hiding in the undergrowth laughing. We’ve had this grey-a**ed bumble bee and lots of others for years and early Spring this year brought them out to gorge on Willow and Gorse.
The same cuckoo bee that was recently found by naturalists in an old Co. Cavan graveyard has now arrived in Dublin. I am sure that it has been there all along but we just didn’t notice it.
I’ve seen this bee in my garden
I spotted one the other day with a black body and pink arse !!
Ran over one of those with the lawn mower.
Isn’t it strange that every cuckoo bee, in the entire species, does the same thing? Invades the nest and kills the resident queen. You’d expect it from one or two rogues, but the whole lot of them?!
We have a nest of them in our garden.
Stunning creatures.
Awesomeness
BEADS???
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