Maximilien Carlier (on site), with AFP
modified to
8:02 p.m., September 04, 2022
It is the story of a hidden social misery. At the beginning of the week, in Noyelles-sous-Lens in the Pas-de-Calais, a couple was arrested for violence against minors and lack of the most basic hygiene on their children. One of them, 2 years old, has never touched the ground. It was the eldest son who alerted social services to put an end to these horrors. Behind an ordinary red brick house, with a large garden, slightly rusty bicycles and an old trampoline, hides a family of ten children aged from 4 months to 24 years old, living in appalling conditions.
The children lived in deplorable hygienic conditions. They were victims of deprivation of liberty and numerous abuses, such as spankings. They were all in school but some were often absent. The prosecution was notified on August 30 by a report from the Childhood Social Aid (ASE), the public prosecutor of Béthune, Thierry Dran, told AFP, confirming information from the Voix du Nord.
A child tied up “because he was doing stupid things”
Two children slept tied to high chairs, in a “deplorable state of hygiene”, according to Thierry Dran. A situation that the mother-in-law and grandmother deny: “No, it was so that they wouldn’t fall off their chairs. In the house, everything is clean and correct. The children were running on the floor, they had to eat,” they say. But it is a completely different reality that the police discover when they arrive at the home. The mother cannot manage her six brats while the father tinkers with his cars. Two children aged 2 and 5 are tied up. The first because he was doing stupid things. The other for his protection says the mother, because according to her he has cancer.
“How can we come to this?”
For the inhabitants, it is consternation. “We make children to make them happy, not unhappy, otherwise they will be shocked for life”, judges a neighbor. “I already find it appalling. Me, it makes me angry, a mother like that I slap her.” A local resident asks herself questions about the extent of this social misery: “How can we come to this? Why were there no reports?”, she wonders when it was the eldest son, aged 24, who turned everything over to the authorities after an argument with his stepfather.
The parents have now been placed under judicial control and some children are subject to a provisional placement order. “What is reproached is above all the total lack of hygiene, and serious educational deficiencies”, or “the fact of not having taken care of his children in a normal way”, specified the prosecutor. Following this affair, Charlotte Caubel, Secretary of State to the Prime Minister, in charge of children, announced Sunday evening that she would go to Pas-de-Calais on Monday to talk “with the actors child protection premises”, and “take stock of the identification and management of this situation” or “the protection of all children in the department”