They come to the court in Utrecht by bike, the parents of Sarah V., even when it rains. Then they take off their rain suits downstairs in the hall. In the courtroom, on the fourth floor, they sit in the second row, behind their daughter in the dock. Besides them: a brother and sister of Sarah V., her husband, her mother-in-law.
During the six long days of the criminal trial, twice into the evening, they listen almost motionless and apparently emotionless to the judges, the prosecutors, the lawyers. Only during the breaks can you sometimes hear them express their anger and disbelief. But not with big gestures or loud voices. Soft, discreet.
Sarah V., a doctor and previously trained as an anesthesiologist, is accused of attempted murder of her daughter Y., in the two months after her birth in April 2020. She is also accused of serious assault on her son T., in the four years after his birth in June 2016.
She allegedly gave her children too little or very diluted food, which caused them to not grow. She is said to have poisoned the expressed breast milk for her daughter Y. with the anti-diarrheal drug loperamide. She allegedly misinformed T.’s doctors about T.’s diet and stool, as a result of which they treated him for a serious intestinal disease that, according to the Public Prosecution Service, he did not have. The Public Prosecution Service is demanding a prison sentence of eleven years against her.
Dead silence for seconds
Even when one of the two public prosecutors made that demand, last Tuesday after a hearing of more than seven hours, Sarah V.’s parents were calm and collected, just like Sarah V. and her husband, her brother and sister, her mother-in-law. There is deathly silence in the courtroom for seconds. Then, outside the courtroom, they form a closed circle in which they hug and comfort each other.
At the beginning of the requisition, the officer said how unimaginable it is that mothers do something to their children, sometimes the most terrible things. “It doesn’t fit with the image we have of mothers. That’s why we don’t believe it. And if we do believe it, what does it say about us?” She also said that mothers who abuse their children by making up illnesses and faking symptoms almost never confess. They cannot do that, because then they are finished for society. A mother must deny everything and “suggest” innocence, because “then you win sympathy.” And the people around her have to continue to sympathize with her, because what if they think she is guilty?
According to Sarah V.’s family, child abuse by falsifying symptoms of illness does not exist. And if it exists, it is very rare. The fact that doctors cannot medically explain a disease does not mean that the disease does not exist. And certainly not that the mother will be the cause. They find support from someone like professor and legal psychologist Peter van Koppen, who calls child abuse through falsification “nonsense”: a fallacy in which other possible causes are ignored.
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Perhaps, says Sarah V., her breast milk was poisoned by the 60 pills she took
The public prosecutor already expected that Sarah V.’s lawyers would argue that Sarah V. did nothing, that T. and Y. were already ill at birth, that they were treated incorrectly and therefore became even sicker. And that is exactly what they get on Friday, a day later than intended.
Nine o’clock plea
Of the 200 pages of the indictment, 140 were about the amount of food that T. did or did not receive, about the stools he did or did not have, about the differences between them in his medical file and the diary that Sarah V. kept. Sarah V. and her lawyers were therefore “very surprised” and needed more time for their defense. Sarah V. wanted to know why the officers did not simply ask her about those differences in their almost four-year investigation. “I could have refuted everything.”
She writes an eighty-page document to do so. It comes with the lawyers’ plea, which is even longer than the indictment. For nine hours, the lawyers talk about the alternative explanations that they believe are possible for the symptoms of T. and Y. They question every evidence that the Public Prosecution Service believes they have, including the loperamide in Sarah V.’s breast milk. Yes, it was in there, but that was because Sarah V. herself took a lot of loperamide for diarrhea. And due to contamination with grit from the pills in her breast pump bag. According to the lawyers, it is also uncertain that Y. became so ill as a result. She was already sick.
After the response from the Public Prosecution Service last Tuesday, and the response from the defense, Sarah V. gets the last word. She says she was not given the opportunity to say what should have been said and was not given a chance to defend herself. Her life is destroyed. She has three beautiful children (there is an older girl), she loves them, she wants to fight for them. To the judges: “I hope you will look at the facts and give my children their mother back.”
Then there is silence again for seconds, after which the chairman of the court nods and says that the court wants to make a ruling on March 19. That is not certain. The case is so complex, she says, that more time may be needed. “It is honestly not clear to us how we are going to decide on this.” Whatever decision it makes, she says, the court will explain it in great detail. Also in case of acquittal.