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French woman goes on trial for deaths of 8 of her babies

26 June 2015 00:25 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Police contacted the house's previous owners, and quickly discovered the horrifying explanation: Frenchwoman Dominique Cottrez confessed to secretly bearing and then killing eight of her newborns, saying she feared they were children of a long, incestuous relationship with her father, APA reports quoting The Associated Press.

Cottrez, a 51-year-old mother of two grown daughters, went on trial Thursday in the city of Douai, accused of multiple counts of first-degree murder of minors.

Cottrez wept as she took her seat. She faces life in prison if found guilty.

Her lawyers are expected to argue that she was a victim of rape and incest, and ask for a lesser sentence.

The worst infanticide case in modern French history stunned the country when the bodies were discovered in and around the Cottrez' former home in 2010.

Cottrez's obesity appeared to hide the pregnancies, which went unnoticed by her husband, children, neighbors, colleagues — and even doctors at a nearby hospital.

Dozens of forensic and psychiatric experts, police investigators and witnesses, including her husband, daughters and siblings, are scheduled to testify to help understand the incomprehensible, and perhaps to help the defendant open up.

A withdrawn, secretive nurse's aide, Cottrez told investigators she was raped by her father, first when she was 8 and repeatedly through her childhood and teenage years, according to judicial documents. She later entered a long, incestuous relationship with him as an adult, including after she married, and said that it became consenting — and even said she was in love with her father more than she was with her husband.