The horror of Villers-au-Tertre: French woman says she suffocated 8 newborns

Paris: People had placed candles outside the gates of the home of a Frenchwoman who authorities say has acknowledged suffocating eight of her newborn babies.

Police had already sealed off the house in the northern town of Villers-au-Tertre , and authorities are conducting DNA tests to establish for sure that Dominique Cottrez and her husband Pierre-Marie were the parents.

Prosecutor Eric Vaillant said that Cottrez, a 46-year-old nurse's aide, admitted delivering the babies herself and putting the corpses in plastic bags, burying two in the garden of a house that used to be her father's, and hiding the rest in her garage. He told a news conference she's been charged with manslaughter, but her husband has been released.

Vaillant says,"As for Cottrez, well the sky is falling on his head, this is what he told us, and he said that he was completely unaware that his wife was pregnant. Mrs Cottrez is very large so this might explain why it was not possible to notice when she was pregant. And so equally he claimed he had no idea that his wife was getting rid of the babies after their birth."

But back in the town, neighbor Steeve Vico wasn't buying that. He says, "I think he (Mr Cottrez) is an accomplice. Personally, I think you can't, well, maybe you can hide one pregnancy and she did, but eight, I think it's a bit too much."

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Another neighbor, Janique Kaszyinski, was merely horrified and says, "No, not at all. It is revolting. It is monstrous. For me, they are monsters, they are not human beings. It is monstrous to have murdered eight viable babies."

But psyochotherapist Lucy Beresford said for some women being pregnant is just too scary and overwhelming. She says, "They go into a process of denying reality, perhaps concealing the pregnancy, not just from their spouse or from their family, but sometimes from themselves, and then when the baby actually arrives the process of denying reality has to continue, and that's what often leads to infanticide."

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The prosecutor said Cottrez remains in detention, and will undergo further psychiatric testing.