The recent guilty verdict in the infamous “Freezer Baby” murder
case shows how ambivalent we in the West remain when it comes to
the question of evil.
Last week a French jury found Véronique Courjault, 41, guilty of
the murders of her three newborn children. Yet despite her
confession and statements that undermined her psychological
disorder defense, Madame Courjault will serve only 8 years —
less than 3 years per murder — instead of the life sentence she
might have received.
The story began in 2006 when South Korean police announced they’d
found the bodies of two frozen newborns in the deep freezer of
French expatriate couple Jean-Louis and Véronique Courjault. For
months afterward Véronique Courjault denied that she was the
mother of the murdered infants. After DNA testing confirmed her
maternity, Madame Courjault confessed to having suffocated the
children, the first in 2002, and the second in 2003. She also
told police she had killed and burned the body of a third baby in
a fireplace in France some time in 1999.
The French public’s initial response was naturally disgust and
horror, but for many that reaction quickly gave way to feelings
of compassion and empathy, especially after a succession of
doctors suggested Madame Courjault likely suffered from a
psychological disorder called pregnancy denial. One comment on a
website tracking the case was representative:
“Personally I am sad, really sad for this lady. Yes, what she
did could be qualified as cruel or some other adjective. But
first, what I would like to understand is why this woman went
ahead with her pregnancies, what she believed in, what her
hopes were.”
The author of a celebrated book on the case noted how
sympathetically the French public related to the “Freezer Baby”
murderer: “It helped that the public could relate. [Here] you had
a middle-class, bourgeois family, educated people. It made people
think, ‘This could be me.’” (Interestingly the Web comments of
Europeans were markedly different from those of Americans, who
were not so quick to think “this could be me,” and whose comments
usually ran more toward the sinfulness of the deeds and demands
for vengeance.)
The court, however, seemed to accept that pregnancy denial —
where a woman is so mentally opposed to having a child she seems
to show no physical symptoms of pregnancy — is a legitimate
disorder, so the question came down to whether hers was a case of
mental illness or premeditated murder. Or a little of both.
A few of Madame Courjault’s early comments threw the denial
defense into doubt, as when she said: “I decided straight away
not to keep the baby I was carrying.” And “[I know it sounds
absurd], but I was conscious of being pregnant, but not of being
pregnant with babies.” What’s more, Courjault admitted she and
her husband had agreed that they did not want any more children
and that she wore loose fitting clothing to hide the pregnancies
from her husband and others.
So why was the court so lenient? After all, with the three years
already served, Madame Courjault will be out in a mere five
years.
ACCORDING TO many media reports, the court’s leniency was due to
the fact that Madame Courjault retains the affection of her
husband Jean-Louis and their two children. Said Jean-Louis: “[I
have] no doubt about Veronique’s potential as a wife and as a
mother. We must free that potential.” Very sweet, but for the
sake of any future newborns, let us hope Jean-Louis wears a
condom from now on.
I suspect the reason for the court’s extraordinary leniency was
more philosophical and had to do with a post-Christian nation’s
refusal to accept the existence of evil in the world, a startling
fact considering the hell France has been through the past
century. If evil does not exist, there must be some other
explanation for Madame Courjault’s actions. A dubious
psychological disorder like pregnancy denial seems tailor-made
for the purpose.
In earlier Christian times there could be no doubt about the
existence of evil. It was literally an article of faith that man
had two natures, one good, one evil, and one must constantly
struggle to keep the bad in check. Today, especially in Europe,
that duality is considered a quaint superstition. With each
successive generation we are thought to progress morally and
ethically. There is no evil, just disorders, and those disorders
are hardly the sufferer’s fault, but often the fault of society,
which puts too much pressure on…women, children, fill in the
blank.
In the end the court seemed as morally confused as Madame
Courjault when she repeatedly made puzzling statements like:
“What I did is so monstrous, without explanation. For me, those
children did not have a real existence.”
“The pre-trial investigation allowed me to become aware of many
things, to ask myself questions. But I still don’t have any
answer. I hope to find some.”
The French public and the court in its sentencing seemed to
support Madame Courjault in her search for answers, as if to say:
hopefully, some day, she will find the answers she seeks and she
finally will be at peace. Meanwhile the overall impression from
the media is that such murders are inexplicable, that, while such
crimes occur more than one would think, they can never be
satisfactorily explained. If nothing else the trial and its
outcome did support one of my many contentions. What else
explains the court’s excessive leniency and the outpouring of
sympathy for Madame Courjault, but society’s profound moral
confusion when it comes to questions of unspeakable evil?
