“You don’t persevere, it’s stubbornness!” : a mother judged because she keeps getting back her son of whom she does not have custody

Judge Julia Saléry presided over the criminal hearing this Friday, May 24 in Alès. Free Midi – ALEXIS BETHUNE

The defendant, a repeat offender, received a mixed sentence this Friday, May 24, before the criminal court of Alès, in Gard. She escapes a new committal warrant at the end of the hearing. 
 

The dispute regularly brought these separated parents to court. Nathalie, who lives in Isère, appeared again in Alès this Friday for having taken her 16-year-old son away from his father, who has sole custody of him. This case, whose history is complex, regularly comes before the courts.

For more than twelve years, he has brought complaints filed against Nathalie up to date. These removals of children, or similar offenses, fill the criminal record of this fifty-year-old and have already cost her 13 months of detention during an appearance before the Grenoble criminal court, at the end of which a committal warrant had been ordered, even if the prosecution had not requested it.

In November 2022, she does it again. When she leaves prison, she decides to pick up her son from an Alesian college, before dropping him off at Les Mages for a taekwondo class. For his part, André, the dad, was waiting for him with "anxiety" at the bus stop .

An endless file

"But are you questioning yourself ? You have just come out of prison for the same reason, and you are returning to Alès? , says judge Julia Salery, who presides over the hearing. Or you think that justice is coming after you ?"  A silence settles before the defendant, who seems disoriented, blurts out: "It’is an impression".

Looking absent, formulating vague answers, she is brought back to reality when the judge asks her why she does not warn the father during her meetings with the teenager, and why she does not warn the father when she meets the teenager. failed to comply with court decisions. "I’I'm afraid that he will leave with him, that he’will prevent me from seeing him… He doesn't give me any news; if he gave me some, maybe I wouldn't have done it […] I will respect the decisions as long as it happens like last time", replies the accused, referring to the father's authorization for a walk in the village, and a visit under his supervision to the garden.

"You are rightly criticized for having to adapt to your desires!",retorts Julia Salery, who recalls that the Nîmes Court of Appeal stipulates that this young person, already fragile, is destabilized by the "all power of his mother"< /em>. A fact confirmed on the stand by the father: "After seeing her, he was violent, angry with me. He imitates his mother's behavior…"