A nine-year-old boy had been living alone for two years in an unheated flat in southwestern France after being abandoned by his mother so she could live with her boyfriend, it has been revealed.
The child had been left to fend for himself in a council flat in Nersac, a village on the outskirts of Angoulême in Charente, after his mother moved in with her new partner three miles away, French media reports.
The unidentified mother, 39, was sentenced last week to six months in prison for abandoning and endangering a minor. The boy’s father, who lived in another town, was not charged.
The boy lived alone from 2020 to 2022 and during that time had periods without hot water, heating or electricity, washing himself in cold water and wrapping up in sleeping bags and blankets to stay warm.
He was forced to steal tomatoes from a nearby balcony and scavenge for food from neighbours, who eventually went to police who got the boy taken into care.
The child had been left to fend for himself in a council flat in Nersac, a village on the outskirts of Angoulême in Charente
Before he was found, neighbours expressed their concerns to the boy’s mother, who had told them that she was caring for her son and to stay out of her business, The Times reports.
His life of solitude and neglect went undetected, locals have said, partly because the boy attended school, was clean and kept up good grades.
The town’s mayor Barbara Couturier told France Bleu that the boy had kept up with his homework and was a ‘good student’, despite his ordeal.
‘I think it was also a kind of protection that he put around himself to say “everything is fine,”‘ she said.
She added that she did not think anyone would have been able to detect what was really going on given how well the boy looked after himself.
A classmate of the youngster told TFI television: ‘He told his mates that he ate his meals alone and took the bus alone. He didn’t go out and stayed home all the time.’
The boy’s mother reportedly insisted at last week’s trial that she had lived with her son, but this is said to have been disproven by mobile data obtained by police which showed she had hardly been at the flat.
Neighbours have spoken of their guilt at not realising what was going on or acting sooner, telling local media that the anonymity of modern life played a part in allowing the neglect to continue for so long.
‘When there was a family and a village around the family, if the mother neglected the child, it didn’t matter too much, because the rest of the family and the whole village took care of the child. It’s not like that any more,’ a local resident said.