“I am monstrous, but I never wanted Amandine to die,” the mother of the schoolgirl who died of starvation tells the jury

Sandrine Pissara encourt la réclusion criminelle à perpétuité. MIDI LIBRE – Aline Champsaur

Sandrine Pissarra, 54, accused of acts of torture and barbarity after the death on August 6, 2020 of her 13-year-old daughter in Montblanc, near Pézenas, tried to explain herself before the Hérault Assize Court, invoking violence suffered in her childhood in Portugal that she had never spoken about until now.

She begins to speak, with energy and precision, with tears, too, this Thursday, January 23, before the Hérault Assize Court. And we want to listen to her, this torturing mother, who has opened up so little about herself. About this need to beat and terrorize all her children. About her infinite cruelty, capable of slowly killing Amandine, 13, reduced to a haggard and starving quasi-skeleton, on her last day, August 6, 2020, in her house in Montblanc, near Pézenas.

A childhood like Zola in Portugal

This Thursday morning, Sandrine Pissarra, 54, speaks, after having said almost nothing during the four years of investigation. “In my childhood I experienced acts of violence from my mother and neglect from my father. I received slaps, punches when I had to learn to read, from my mother.”

She describes a childhood like Zola, in Portugal, after the parental divorce.“I had to go and fetch water from the well, teach classes by candlelight. We washed our clothes in the tub, we washed ourselves in cold water. I knew what it was like to go to bed with nothing in your stomach, or very little.”
Problem: the investigation being over, none of this can be verified anymore. “You never told us about it. We can suspect that you are doing it opportunistically?” asks his lawyer, Mr. Darrigade. Sandrine Pissarra denies it, claims to have kept quiet “out of shame.”

“I'm going to die, I'm not going to hold on, help me”

But these words clash with others. Those of Lola, a supervisor at the Sigean boarding school, who met Amandine there in 2019. She decided to come and testify at the trial herself, after reading what her mother said about her. No, the schoolgirl was not capricious or anorexic.

On the other hand “several signals went off, she was stealing from the canteen, she was never in short sleeves, she was terrified at every bad note of the parents' reaction”. The rest is chilling. “On March 17, when the President announced the lockdown and that we were going to close the boarding school, Amandine collapsed on the ground. She told me, I'm going to die, I'm not going to hold on, help me.”

200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000

Read also: “I hate my mother. Let justice be done” : at the Hérault assizes, Amandine's martyred face and her heartbreaking cries

Leaving the box, led to the bar, facing the jurors, Sandrine Pissarra explains herself. Recalls her first two daughters abducted by their father, the third dead at three months. “I was all alone with my pain.” The blows, the violence ?”How I got here, I can't explain. I'm still looking for the answer, apart from my own traumas when I was a child.”

The President: “How would you describe yourself?” She: “A monstrous mother.” “You stopped her from eating?” “No. She ate what she wanted.” “But she was starving, Madam! You saw that she was wasting away?” “Yes, I lost my footing, I saw and didn't know how to react.” The judge: “You wanted to kill her?” She is indignant. “Oh no, not at all! Anything you want, but not that!”

Two terrible screenshots of the storage room

On the screen, two photos found on the tablet of her little brother, who was in charge of monitoring what the camera installed in Amandine's dungeon was filming. It is June 26, 2:29 p.m., she is naked, on her knees, prostrate on a roll of linoleum, to make it even more uncomfortable. Another photo, July 27, a few days before her death. Amandine is standing, naked, frighteningly thin, arched and leaning on a shelf, as if to keep herself from collapsing.
And then there are these gray areas about the end of the teenager's ordeal, on August 6. Noticing that she was at her worst, Sandrine Pisserra and her partner Jean-Michel Cros allegedly tried to feed her again, before a final and fatal fainting spell, at midday.

Jean-Michel Cros risks 30 years for deprivation of care and food. MIDI LIBRE – Aline Champsaur

None of them admit to having hoisted her from her closet to the second floor, where the firefighters will find her, dressed in pants and a black T-shirt. Problem: They weren't called until around 4 p.m. What happened in the meantime? ?

Ambre, her older sister, says that her mother ordered her to shower Amandine, just before she collapsed. The medical examiner noted the deplorable state of the body covered in wounds and bedsores, but noted a curious detail. “Surprisingly, the nails were well-groomed.”

A two-hour hole before the firefighters were called, a shower to wash away the filth, Amandine certainly no longer having the strength to reach the toilets on the second floor… And we shudder at the thought of this scene, where this torturing mother, a professional manicurist, may have done the nails of her daughter's corpse, to make it more presentable before the firefighters arrived.
“I am monstrous, but I did not want Amandine to die. If I am here, it is because I have only lived with violence around me  Ellen repeats without convincing.

“The fight against abuse is a daily battle” retorts Me Isabelle Buquet, civil party for the Innocence en danger association. “A child dies in France every five days.” Me Luc Abratkiewicz, civil party for Amandine's father, sums up this new poignant day: “No one will leave this room unscathed.”

I subscribe to read the rest