Woman Charged with Smothering 8 of Her Own Babies
A heavyset nursing assistant in her 40s has been indicted in France for allegedly smothering eight of her own children as babies between 1989 and 2007 and hiding their bodies in a garden and the garage.
Dominique Cottrez, who is married and the mother of two grown daughters, apparently never told anyone she was pregnant, according to the New York Times. However, she reportedly confessed when she was questioned by authorities after the new owners of her previous home discovered the bodies of two infants buried in the garden in plastic bags.
Her husband and two daughters said they knew nothing about the babies. Cottrez is undergoing psychiatric tests.
After a difficult delivery of her first daughter, who is now 22, Cottrez decided she didn’t want any more children but she also didn’t want to see a doctor concerning potential contraception, public prosecutor Éric Vaillant of Douaj tells the newspaper. He says her weight helped her conceal the fact that she was pregnant.
Some women, as discussed in earlier ABAJournal.com posts, apparently seek to create medical problems for their children in order to gain attention for themselves.
However, in this case no one apparently knew of the babies Cottrez allegedly had except herself.
The Death of Innocents, a book by Richard Firstman and Jamie Talan, discusses a number of cases in the United States in which parents have been suspected of killing multiple young children. Alleged motives included a desire to benefit financially by collecting life insurance on the child and, in at least one case, a desire on the mother’s part to avoid the continuing responsibilities of parenthood.
