Dousing your child with hot water or beating him with a buckle: how does a mother become a torturer? Psychiatrist Rudy Verelst tries to look into the head of Raul’s (9) mother

Doused with hot water, beaten with a buckle, on their knees for hours on grains of rice. The assize process surrounding the death of 9-year-old Raul has only just begun and what is already emerging defies imagination. How can someone go from parent to torturer of their own child? And is a difficult childhood sufficient as an explanation? Forensic psychiatrist Rudy Verelst (64) tries to look into the head of mother Ioana-Maria Micu (33): “What initially seemed too far away gradually becomes ‘normal’ in such a family.”

ttn-3