Her family noticed a foul smell in the house but assumed it came from sewage.
Trigger warning: this post deals with accounts of incest.
The story of France’s most horrific infanticide case has taken a turn as the accused reveals she was a victim of abuse and incest.
Dominique Cottrez is currently on trial for murdering eight of her own newborn babies. This week, she revealed she killed the children because she feared they were a product of a sexual relationship with her father.
Ms Cottrez was first raped by her father at the age of eight.
She told the courts the frequent assaults continued into her teenage years and adulthood, becoming more and more commonplace as the years ticked on.
Eventually, she says, the relationship became “consensual”.
The details of this incestuous relationship were revealed to a French court this week, where Ms Cottrez, 51, is charged with multiple counts of infanticide.
Ms Cottrez’s crimes were first discovered in 2010 when the owners of the old Cottrez residence discovered a small body buried in the backyard.
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A police search uncovered the body of another baby, prompting authorities to pursue the former owners of this residence.
It didn’t take long for Ms Cottrez to confess to her crimes. After conducting a search of the Cottrezes’ current home, police found six more babies in garbage bags scattered throughout the residence.
Despite Ms Cottrez sharing her home with her husband, one adult daughter and her children — nobody even suspected she was pregnant.
Her husband, Pierre-Marie — a carpenter and member of the local council — and their two daughters later said they noticed a foul smell in the house but assumed it came from sewage or even from Pierre’s feet.
Ms Cottrez said her weight — which she has struggled with her entire life — managed to hide her pregnancies from her family.
She even managed to conceal one of her pregnancies from doctors and hospital staff.
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According to Mail Online, Ms Cottrez gave birth to her second baby while in hospital following an epileptic fit.
She reportedly delivered the baby in a toilet before strangling it and storing it in a bag in her cupboard before taking it home when she left.
Ms Cottrez admitted to killing the first baby in her home by smothering it with bed sheets. She then stashed the lifeless body in her wardrobe.
She does not remember the details of the following six deaths.
Autopsy reports later revealed the children were suffocated within seconds of being born, Metro UK reports.
The murders are believed to have occurred between 1989 and 2007 — the same year Ms Cottrez’s father passed away.
Ms Cottrez — a nurse’s aide — claims she never had an abortion or sought to use contraception because she had a phobia of doctors.
According to the National Post, judicial documents say Ms Cottrez saw the murders as a “means of contraception.”
If found guilty, Ms Cottrez could face life imprisonment.
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Top Comments
Please help me, I'm not trying to judge or criticise pro choice stand point, but simply understand how it would have been ok for this woman to seek an abortion, which could have still been legal very late in a pregnancy, but is considered to be the most heinous crime if performed immediately after birth. Many babies, without human intervention, would grow to be independent humans but are terminated. Again I'm not trying to judge, it would be easier in this society to be pro choice, and I want to be as accepting as possible but the thought just hurts me. I do really want to understand how a few weeks and a few inches of skin change abortion into murder, is it not always so? I know that it changes legally and that is why this woman is on trial, but does anyone else struggle with the logical inaccuracies?
A baby is not a legal life until it is born and takes a breath.
So once the baby is born alive and she ends its life, it's murder. If she seeks legal means to end the pregnancy prior to birth, it's legal.
I'm a lawyer, so maybe I'm just used to the way the law works, but to me there aren't any logical inaccuracies. It's completely necessary to find *some* line when a foetus/baby turns from something inside a woman's body to its own distinct, legally recognised life.
If there was no line, and all fetuses were legal lives, women could potentially be criminally liable for ANY action that negatively impacts the foetus, from what they eat/drink, to how they drive, or even the air they breathe (eg if they exposed themselves to cigarette smoke). That would obviously be madness. So there has to be a line. The 'first breathe' seems like a logically good one to me.
The thing to understand is that 'late term' abortions refer, usually, to abortions after about the 20 week mark, but sometimes as early as the 16 week mark. Sometimes, these pregnancies are viable,sometimes they aren't - when a pregnancy is viable is dependent on the pregnancy in question (which is why restricting abortions to some magical 'viability' week is unhelpful). Not a great number of women get late term abortions, but for many, it is because of abnormalities picked up in scans, or they didn't know when they became pregnant,and a host of other reasons.
Premature babies, for the most part, need intervention in order to survive, especially those born at the point that these late term abortions are happening, so it's not a matter of these babies being able to thrive but being killed - at the point that the mother is no longer able to carry them, they would not survive without intervention.
I think the true hypocrisy is in the fact that someone who opposes abortion - carried out in a medical setting at the point where the unborn baby is dependent on the mother and/or medical help - think that smothering a living, breathing, entirely independent person is ok. After birth, that is a baby. It is living and breathing on its own. Can you really not see the difference?
For me, if its using my body to grow, chance of harming me then i get the choice if im willing to undergo pregnancy or not.
Once born a baby can be cared for by anyone and is not risking the womans heath and wellbeing
Hi Jess, as always it's an interesting social, moral and ethical topic.
Can I suggest Peter Singer as a starting point though I sense you have read some of his work already. Please note, I'm not for or against his view or politics. He does raise some valid points worthy of discussion which he makes clear in his books.