From Wikipedia: Véronique
Courjault (born Fièvre) is a French citizen who confessed to having
killed three of her babies, two of whom she stored in a freezer at her home.
Her case has been referred to in the media as the "affaire des bébés
congelés," or "freezer
babies" case.
Véronique Courjault (born in 1968 in the French department
of Maine-et-Loire) is the wife of engineer Jean-Louis Courjault (born in 1966).
After their marriage in 1994, they were known to have had two sons born in 1995
and 1997.
After living in France, the couple moved to Seoul (South
Korea) in 2002, while maintaining a home in the French city of Tours.
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Chronology of events
On July 23, 2006, Jean-Louis Courjault, returning to Seoul
after vacationing in France, found two infant corpses in the family freezer. A
few days later, DNA tests performed by South Korean authorities confirmed that
the infants were those of the Courjaults.
On August 22, 2006, Jean-Louis and Véronique Courjault held
a press-conference during which the couple contested the DNA results and called
the media "a lynch mob" that was in conspiracy with commercial rivals
of Jean-Louis Courjault.
The case was transferred to France where new DNA tests were
ordered. On October 12, 2006, Véronique Courjault admitted to killing both
infants and freezing their remains after she gave birth to them in 2002 and
2003 in South Korea. She also confessed to killing a third infant and burning
its body in a fireplace in 1999 while the couple still lived in France.
In January 2009, the case against Jean-Louis Courjault was
dismissed. He stated publicly that he had never been aware of his wife's
pregnancies and that she had in fact kept them secret by wearing loose clothing
and through a process referred to as denial of pregnancy.
On June 18, 2009, Véronique Courjault was found guilty of
having murdered her three infants by the French court and was sentenced to 8
years in prison.
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A large debate in the Francophone press emerged over the
summer of 2009 concerning the basis for Courjault's denial of the three
pregnancies and whether she had deliberately deceived her husband with the
intention of murdering the infants. Swiss television (TSR) in Geneva aired an
interview with American child psychiatrist Daniel Schechter, a specialist in
the diagnosis and treatment of peripartum psychopathology. Schechter described
"denial of pregnancy" as a serious symptom of a psychiatric
disturbance that can have several possible etiologies.
Véronique Courjault was released from jail on May 17, 2010.
She had spent almost 4 years behind bars.
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