Just when you think you can't be shocked at a story, you come across something like this. This makes my physically ill.

Mother kept baby girl in trunk of car for two years
A baby girl was forced to live hidden in the trunk of her mother’s car for almost two years in a case that has appalled France and that investigators say “defies the imagination”.

Mechanics carrying out repairs on a Peugeot 307 family estate in Terrasson-Lavilledieu in the Dordogne were alerted to the child’s presence after hearing “strange noises that sounded like moans” coming from the rear of the vehicle.

The 45-year-old mother, a Portuguese named only as Rose-Marie, claimed that the noises came from “toys”. But the mechanics insisted on opening the trunk and were horrified to discover a small, dehydrated and apparently feverish child lying naked in its own excrement.

The mechanic who found the girl, Guillaume Iguacel, said Monday that he was still in shock from the discovery.

“I’m still having trouble sleeping, it was a horrifying sight, seeing this little girl in her own excrement, not able to hold up her head, white as a sheet,” he said.

Iguacel said the mother appeared to have little concern for the girl. “We were deeply shocked because she didn’t find this abnormal. We told her to remove the little girl [from the trunk] and give her something to drink right away,” he said.

Paramedics were called and she was taken to hospital. Her parents have been charged with child abuse and neglect. Social services have taken into care their three other children — a four-year-old girl and two boys aged nine and 10.

The mother told investigators that she had kept the child’s existence from her husband, an unemployed builder, also Portuguese, who police were unable to question at first because he was drunk. The mother said she gave birth alone and then hid the baby in the boot. It has no birth certificate and apparently no name.

“It appears that the child had been hidden from her birth, and even worse is seriously retarded,” said Jean-Pierre Laffite, the prosecutor in nearby Brive-La-Gaillarde. He said the girl’s height, weight and mental development did not conform to her age, estimated to be between 15 and 23 months. She cannot speak a word. “It’s a situation that defies the imagination,” he added.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/world ... story.html

The world is a sad place for a whole lot of people.

Some people should NEVER give birth!!!!

This breaks my heart. I can't even begin to say how I feel about this.

This makes me too angry. I won't describe what I think should be done to the mother. I will have to accept keeping her in a cage (prison) for the rest of her life.

She's probably already there.

The woman must be unstable...but i'm trying hard to figure out the thought process and not succeeding. Women give birth all the time and try and hide it. Teenagers that don't tell their parents that they're pregnant come to mind. But they usually dispose of the baby, either try to kill it or leave it exposed to the elements somehow, or they give it away. Either way, they seem to try to pretend it never happened.

This mom kept her baby, albeit in a really cruel and awful way--but in a way that was actually more work for her than just getting rid of the child would have been. Which makes me wonder. Did she have a bond with the child? Was this mother herself developmentally delayed? While this child was severely neglected, it was cared for in some way, otherwise it would have died in the first few weeks of life, if not days. she must have been feeding the child.

Maybe the reasons i want to know are just voyerism. But anything that we could as a society figure out about this case might help make sure that it never happens again.

So what would possess a mother to keep a child locked in the trunk of a car for two years but continue to provide the barest of necessities of life for the child? Afraid to tell the father, but somehow unwilling to give the child away...or was it some kind of sadism, watching the child suffer? There is a lot to understand about this case. It tweaks my imagination--the abnormal psychology behind it.

I wonder what can be done for the child now. I wonder if it will have a future. I hope they can find a way to help him or her to be happy in some way.