Relatives of a woman who hid her baby in the maggot-infested trunk of a car on Wednesday said that they had no idea of her secret, at a trial that has drawn horror in France.
Rosa Maria da Cruz, 50, faces up to 20 years in prison for keeping her daughter hidden away until she was nearly two, leaving her with serious mental disabilities.
Discovered in 2013 in the filthy trunk of a Peugeot 307, the baby, Serena, had also been kept in an unused room at the family home in the Correze region of central France.
It was a mechanic who found the baby in the trunk after Da Cruz, who is originally from Portugal, took the car to be repaired.
Hearing a noise, he opened the trunk to discover the baby in a car seat, naked, filthy and dehydrated. She was surrounded by maggots and excrement.
The trial, which opened on Monday, has heard remarkable testimony from relatives of how Da Cruz was to all appearances a model mother to her three other children.
Her partner, Domingos Sampaio Alves, said he had no idea she had given birth to another child and kept it a secret.
By way of explanation, he said he went only once a month on average to the small ground-floor room, under renovation, where Da Cruz kept the baby much of the time.
He also did not visit the car often, as he does not have a driving license.
“I don’t know why she did this,” he told the court in Portuguese through a translator.
The unemployed bricklayer was originally charged, but investigators concluded there was no reason to doubt his account.
Da Cruz was released pending trial and the couple have stayed together.
“I continue to live with her because she is a good mother to the children,” Alves told the court.
They have kept their three older children — aged nine, 14 and 15 — but authorities have refused to let them have contact with Serena, who is now seven and living with foster parents.
In her opening testimony on Monday, Da Cruz fought back tears and told the court: “It’s very hard to be confronted with reality, with the damage I have done.”
Serena now suffers from severe mental impairments, including irreversible autism which medical experts have linked to sensory deprivation during her early months.
A pediatrician who examined Serena and her siblings after the discovery said her team had been “stupefied” by “the gulf between Serena’s situation and those of her brothers and sisters,” who appeared to have been “perfectly raised.”
“You could see she had been a good mother and we could not understand why Serena had not received the same quality of care at home,” the doctor said.
Judge Gilles Fonrouge said that while the child was now in good physical health, she was “closed off to interactions around her.”
Marie-Pierre Peis-Hitier, a lawyer for social services, said the child could only say a handful of words, adding that it had taken a full afternoon to win the child’s trust.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was