A Frenchman went on trial on Tuesday accused of killing his three-year-old son by locking him in a washing machine in a grisly case in which his ex-wife is charged with collusion.
The father, Christophe Champenois, 37, denied any memory of the crime in which he allegedly stuffed his son, Bastien, into the machine and switched it on as punishment for his bad behavior at school.
“At the moment I don’t remember anything,” Champenois told the court, his alleged amnesia the latest in a long line of explanations for what unfolded in the home of the troubled family on Nov. 25, 2011.
It was Champenois himself who called emergency services in the town of Germigny-l’Eveque, east of Paris, saying he had a “small problem” as his son had fallen down the stairs.
He added that he had given him a bath to refresh him and that the toddler must have drowned because he had water coming out of his nostrils.
However, the victim’s elder sister, then five, told the doctor: “Daddy put Bastien in the washing machine because he was naughty at school.”
She maintained this version throughout the investigation and the child’s mother, Charlene Cotte, 29, has said she saw Champenois put Bastien in the washing machine and turn it on.
Cotte told investigators she was doing a puzzle with her daughter and Champenois was surfing on the Internet while their son screamed inside the machine.
She said that when her ex-husband removed Bastien from the washing machine and noticed he was no longer breathing, he said: “At least he won’t bother us anymore.”
However, in an interview with Le Parisien published on Tuesday, Cotte said she had tried to save her son and that Champenois had pushed her away from the washing machine.
A neighbor who came to the apartment to help described Bastien as “frozen, completely naked. He was all white, limp, practically like a toy.”
Cotte was initially charged with failing to prevent a crime, but this was changed to “aiding and abetting murder and violence.”
She again denied any complicity in the crime in court on Tuesday.
Her lawyer Gerard Zbili described her as a “broken woman, who lost the child that she loved,” but who was unable to protect him out of fear of her husband.
Several child protection agencies are appearing in a civil suit in the case, which has revealed a deeply troubled family known to social services.
It has emerged that Bastien was not wanted by his father, who dealt out harsh punishments for his increasingly agitated behavior at home and at school, such as locking him in a cupboard.
The failure of social workers is also to be examined in the trial, as three reports of a “child in danger” and nine of “worrying information” had been filed before the murder.
“This is not an isolated act ... it is not a fit of rage or madness, it is the final act of violence against a child who was always mistreated,” said Isabelle Steyer, a lawyer for a child protection group.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion