A French woman, 39 year old Fabienne Kabou who left her 15 month
old daughter to drown on a beach said Monday that she had no other
explanation but “witchcraft”. Kabou went on trial for the murder of
15-month-old daughter, Adelaide, which shocked the country in November
2013.
The French woman of Senegalese origin described her well-off childhood
in Dakar before she moved to Paris to study philosophy and architecture
and fell in love with a sculptor 30 years her senior, Michel Lafon who
did not recognize or show any interest in the child.She told the court in the northeastern town of Saint-Omer:
“In 2011 I fell pregnant with Adelaide, she was born in August and I ended up killing her, 15 months after her birth,”
In 2013, Kabou travelled with her 15 month old daughter from their home
in Paris to the northern resort town of Berck-sur-Mer where she made
enquiries about the local tides before heading to the beach.
She said goodbye to her sleeping daughter and placed her near the water
on a cold night. The baby’s lifeless body was discovered early the next
morning by prawn fishermen.
10 days after the baby was discovered, police were able to track down
Kabou, through surveillance video, to her renovated art studio home
where she lived with Adelaide’s father. She admitted to the crime when
she was confronted by the Police, she never lied about it.
Kabou said she had spent some 40,000 euros ($45,000) consulting various
“witchdoctors and healers” before she killed her daughter.
She told the court:
“Witchcraft. That is my default explanation because I have no other.”
“Nothing makes sense in this story. What interest could I have in
tormenting myself, lying, killing my daughter? I spoke of sorcery and I
am not joking. Even a stupid person would not do what I did.”
Kabou’s lawyer Fabienne Roy-Nansion asked her to explain why she thought evil forces were behind her daughter’s death.
“For many years I struggled to wake up in the morning, my feet were
paralysed. I had hallucinations, like the walls which didn’t stop
trembling,”
Her lawyer, Roy-Nansion describes Kabou as from a well-to-do Catholic background and of “remarkable intelligence”.
A court-appointed psychiatrist found that her “psychological status is
largely influenced by cultural references and an individual history
linked to Senegalese witchcraft that radically altered her view of the
world”.
However a lawyer for a children’s group that is a civil party to the
case, Jean-Christophe Boyer, accused Kabou of using witchcraft as a
defence strategy.
“You are faced with a very intelligent woman who knows she must not say
she is mad, but give enough to the experts to appear mad, so you have
sorcery and it is part of her culture,” he said.
Another court psychiatrist, Paul Bensussan, said her act was possibly
triggered by a deep depression related to the birth of her child.
Her lawyer said the child was born in the couple’s home and was never
registered. No one close to the couple, not even Kabou’s mother, knew of
her existence. The baby’s father Lafon was not in any way interested in
the child or her well being which deeply bothered Kabou and made her
feel alone.
A DNA test was carried out after Kabou’s arrest to prove his paternity.
Kabou said:
“The two years before the murder of my daughter were the worst of my
life. The two years in prison have been calmer and more peaceful,” she
said in court.
Kabou, who is charged with premeditated murder and faces life in prison.
Source: AFP
