French boy killed in washing machine

Police in France have charged a 33-year-old father with murder after he allegedly killed his three-year-old son by stuffing him into a washing machine and turning it on.

Published: 28 November 2011 16:47 CET

The man, identified in reports as Christophe Champenois, was charged with “murder of a minor” late Sunday in the city of Meaux near Paris, court sources said.

The boy’s mother was charged with failing to prevent a crime and failing to assist a person in danger.

Both were held without bail.

A source connected with the case said the child appeared to have died from “a blow to the head”.

Neighbours said the boy, Bastien, died on Friday after his father put him naked in the washing machine to punish him for getting into trouble at nursery school.

A neighbour who gave her name only as Alice told journalists that she had seen the boy’s body after his mother had come to her apartment for help.

“I took the little boy in my arms, he was frozen, completely naked. He was all white, limp, practically like a toy,” said Alice, who lives in the same apartment building as the couple in Germiny L’Eveque, a town of 1,300 people.

Alice said the boy’s mother had attempted to resuscitate him with heart massage but failed.

A source connected with the inquiry said the man was denying the charges and asserting that the boy had fallen down the stairs.

But witness testimony and tests on the body were “consistent with the fact that the child was put into a washing machine,” the source said.

The source said the father had apparently been punishing the boy for misbehaving at his nursery school and said the child had been repeatedly abused, including by being locked up for hours in a cupboard.

The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.