A nine-year-old French boy abandoned for two years in a flat without heating or electricity was forced to steal tomatoes to survive but still managed to attend school every day.
The case has gripped France in recent days after grim details about the child’s abandonment emerged during a trial that ended with his mother being jailed for neglect.
A court in Angoulême heard how he had been left to fend for himself in the south-western village of Nersac between 2020 and 2022, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. His 39-year-old mother, identified only as Alexandra, lived with her boyfriend three miles away.
Universe 25: How a mouse “Utopia” experiment ended in a nightmare
The boy survived by living off cookies, cakes and canned food that she would occasionally drop off, as well as tomatoes desperately pilfered from a neighbour’s garden, the court was told.
“I made a little garden for myself, and the little one came discreetly to take tomatoes to eat,” the neighbour told French news channel TF1.
Continue here: The Telegraph
