Daniel and Caroline M. compared voluntary violence on their son Victor, then 8 months old. They were relaxed.
by Pascale Robert-Diard
They would like to explain and explain to the unique judge who listens to them everything they have experienced. She begins a sentence, he pursues her. They have so much to say that their words come up against and get into. Behind them – do they perceive it? – There are the murmurs of the other defendants who are waiting for their turn and the annoyed sighs of lawyers who find that decidedly, the four hours devoted to this first file, called Monday, November 28 at the correctional hearing of the Versailles court, are far too much long. But it’s been eight years, almost to the day, that Daniel and Caroline M. are suspected of voluntary violence on their son Victor, then 8 months old and that they hope to see their innocence recognized.
On November 12, 2014, the public prosecutor of Versailles was a recipient of a report from the Necker hospital in Paris. The child admitted a few days earlier to the emergency room of pediatric neurosurgery, presented, with regard to the first clinical examinations, “a bilateral chronic hematoma with right acute bleeding and retinal hemorrhages”. The doctor’s report concluded: “According to the recommendations of the High Authority for Health (HAS), the diagnosis of cranial trauma inflicted by shaking is highly probable.”
The miners’ brigade is seized, and Daniel and Caroline M., who spent their days and nights in the hospital alongside Victor, are immediately sidelined. To investigators, who hear them under the police regime, they repeat what they have already said to doctors. On November 5, 2014, Caroline M.’s father went to get his grandson from the nanny to bring him back to her parents. Arriving in front of their pavilion, he fell on the bitumen with the child in his arms. Alerted by “the empty look” of Victor, Daniel M. called the firefighters and the child was hospitalized.
Judicial information is open. The first expertise, then the complement of expertise requested by the investigating judge, are formal: the fall of Victor, in the arms of his grandfather, cannot alone explain the medical observations, in particular retinal hemorrhages. The child, say the experts, “was the victim of one or more episodes of violent tremors which can go back to the surroundings of October 10, 2014”, almost a month earlier. The life of Daniel and Caroline M. has screened. He is an engineer, she is a civil servant, Victor is their only son, they used an oocyte donation after long years of unsuccessful hope. They are both 40 years old when they finally become parents. For six months, they took turns at home around the baby, born premature, then told the day to an approved nanny. Parents, worried, very protective, unanimously say loved ones. “A psychorigid father”, nuances the pediatrician they regularly consulted. Skills, sudden gestures? Daniel M. spontaneously recognizes one, one night, while his son shouted. But to shake the child, no, that never repeats. The nanny is also the subject of information. She is put out of the case. The suspicion remains on Daniel and Caroline m.
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