A French mother was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week for abandoning her 9-year-old child, leaving him to live alone in the family's council flat for two years.
BFMTV reported the boy had appeared to survive on cake, canned goods, and tomatoes stolen from a neighbouring balcony.
He lived in the town of Nersac, with the child's mother living with her partner in another apartment 5km away and only visiting the child from "time to time".
Nersac mayor Barbara Couturier said the child often did not have hot water or heating, but remained in school and was a good student.
She said she alerted the local and national police about the situation after the mother asked social services to help buy food.
“I met his mum on May 2022. She came to tell us that she had financial problems, and we gave her four vouchers for food, but she took some processed food products instead so that got me suspicious. Some residents told me that there was a child living alone, so I connected the two things and I called the local police and the national police,” Couturier told BFMTV.
Couturier added that the child had been in social services care since September 2022.
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