- The 9-year-old was left to fend for himself in a council flat in the village of Nersac
A nine-year-old boy had been living alone in an unheated flat in south-west France for two years after being abandoned by his mother so she could live with her boyfriend, it has been revealed.
The child was left to fend for himself in a municipal flat in Nersac, a village on the outskirts of Angoulême, after his mother moved in with her new partner five kilometers away, French media report.
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 city, 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 with cold water and wrapping himself in sleeping bags and blankets to stay warm.
He was forced to steal tomatoes from a nearby balcony and look for food from neighbors, who eventually went to the police who took the boy into custody.
The child was left to fend for himself in a council flat in Nersac, a village on the edge of Angoulême in the Charente.
Before he was found, neighbors expressed their concerns to the boy’s mother, who told them she was caring for her son and had to stay out of her business. The times reports.
His life of loneliness and neglect went unnoticed, locals say, partly because the boy went to school, was clean and got good grades.
Mayor Barbara Couturier said this France Blue that the boy had done his homework well and was a ‘good student’ despite his ordeal.
“I think it was also a kind of protection that he put around himself, saying ‘everything is fine,'” she said.
She added that she didn’t think anyone would have been able to discover what was really going on, given how well the boy took care of himself.
A classmate of the youngster told TFI television: ‘He told his friends that he ate alone and took the bus alone. He didn’t go out and stayed home all the time.’
The boy’s mother is said to have insisted at the trial last week that she had been living with her son, but this was allegedly refuted by mobile data obtained by police showing she had barely been in the flat.
Neighbors have expressed guilt for not realizing what was happening or acting sooner, telling local media that the anonymity of modern life has played a role in allowing the neglect to continue for so long.
‘If there was a family and a village around the family, it didn’t matter much if the mother neglected the child, because the rest of the family and the whole village took care of the child. That is no longer the case,” says a local resident.