This social worker was sentenced by the Draguignan prosecutor's office to 10 months suspended prison sentence for "neglect of a minor".
A 40-year-old from Fréjus (Var) has just been sentenced to 10 months suspended imprisonment for "neglect of a minor" by the Draguignan prosecutor's office, Thursday, December 17, reports LCI. Likewise, the court prohibits him from exercising a professional activity in contact with minors. A decision that puts an end to her current job as a social worker in an educational action service in an open environment. In 2018, the accused learned that her adoption application had been validated in an orphanage in Brazzaville (Congo). But a week after meeting the child, she changes her mind. Why ? The Frenchwoman thinks that the little boy, aged eight, is "unmanageable ", according to its terms. "During the week I spent with him, he was unmanageable. You had to constantly watch him. All the time, every minute. I felt he would ultimately be better off at the orphanage than with me.", she tries to explain, can we read in Var Matin. She thus takes the powder escampette and returns to France, without the orphan. Yet the adoption process has been approved and the little boy is French. A complaint is filed. Facing the court, social assistance does not understand the charges against her and explains that she left the little boy in the orphanage he has known for years, where security is guaranteed. Arguments that do not hold for the prosecution.
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A complex situation
In the meantime, the child is still a resident of the Congolese orphanage. The same place where he was taken in at 8 months, following his abandonment on the steps of a church. For Me Muriel Gestas, who defends the interests of the little boy, we need personalized treatment for him. "It would be better, rather than placement in a foster home, to seize a family court judge so that he can pronounce the deprivation of parental authority and that he is then placed in a foster family", she says. "This child, who can no longer be adopted, is not an ordinary case, he experienced a specific trauma after a first abandonment at the age of eight months and a new one when his mother abandoned him at the orphanage in front of all the other kids who say to him today 'saw you, the white mother didn't want you'", adds the lawyer to the France-Presse agency. It is good and necessary to insist on the fact that an adoption is the fruit of a mature reflection, lives are at stake. Fortunately, the majority of adopters .es are attentive.ve.s to this.
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs recalls that 421 children were adopted abroad by French nationals or foreigners residing in France in 2019. And Congo is the fifth country of origin of these adoptions (behind Vietnam, Colombia , Thailand and Haiti).