A court in northern France has sentenced a woman to nine years in prison for killing eight of her newborn babies between 1989 and 2000.
At the trial in the town of
Douai, the prosecution had asked for an 18-year term for Dominique Cottrez, 51.
The defence had argued that
the former health worker should be acquitted because of her troubled mental
state. Cottrez earlier confessed to
suffocating her children after giving birth secretly at home near Lille.
She then buried the bodies
in the garden of her parents' home and at her own home nearby in
Villers-au-Tertre.The former nursing assistant
had previously said she had a long incestuous relationship with her father and
that she feared each baby might be his.
However, during the trial
she did not talk about the relationship.
Cottrez, who is obese, also
said that from a young age she had battled with her weight and was mocked by
other children at school.
She apparently managed to
conceal her pregnancies from everyone, including her doctor and her husband,
because of her obesity.
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