A French father who stuffed his son into a washing machine and then surfed the Internet as the toddler died was jailed for 30 years on Friday.
Christophe Champenois, 36, rammed three-year-old Bastien into the device and switched it on, allegedly as punishment for misbehavior.
The child’s 29-year-old mother, Charlene Cotte, told investigators she did a puzzle with her daughter, and Champenois used the Internet while their son screamed inside the whirring washing machine.
She was jailed for 12 years, for “aiding and abetting murder and violence.”
Cotte said that when her ex-husband removed Bastien from the machine and noticed he was no longer breathing, he said: “At least he won’t bother us anymore.”
It was Champenois who called emergency services in the town of Germigny-l’Eveque, east of Paris, in November 2011, saying he had a “small problem” as his son had fallen down the stairs.
Champenois said he had given his son a bath and that the child must have drowned, because he had water coming out of his nostrils.
However, the victim’s older sister, then five, told the doctor: “Daddy put Bastien in the washing machine, because he was naughty at school” — a version she maintained throughout the investigation.
A neighbor who went to the apartment to help described the child as “frozen, completely naked. He was all white, limp, practically like a toy.”
Cotte’s 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.
During the investigation it emerged that the golden-haired Bastien was not wanted by his father, who meted out harsh punishments for his increasingly agitated behavior at home and at school, such as locking him in a cupboard.
Social services had been repeatedly alerted to the family’s case.
“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, lawyer for a child protection group, who said Bastien had “fallen through all the cracks.”
Champenois was told he would not be eligible for parole for at least 20 years.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS