A Montreal mother charged with child abandonment after allegedly abandoning her daughter near a major Ontario highway has been found not criminally responsible. <\/p>\n
A Montreal mother charged with child abandonment has been found not criminally responsible because of mental disorder.<\/p>\n
Quebec court Judge Bertrand St-Arnaud made the declaration Monday at the Valleyfield courthouse after the 34-year-old woman was required to undergo a psychiatric assessment. She has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and will require lifelong treatment. <\/p>\n
The accused\u2019s name is subject to a publication ban to protect the toddler\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n
Police found the woman\u2019s three-year-old daughter alive and conscious in a field near a highway in Ontario on June 18, four days after she was reported missing by her mother in Coteau-du-Lac, Que., triggering a massive police search.<\/p>\n
The woman was arrested and charged with criminal negligence, causing bodily harm and unlawful abandonment of a child.<\/p>\n
According to the police interrogation video submitted on Monday, the woman told authorities she had an affair with a colleague and had become convinced he had \u201cpossessed\u201d or \u201cprogrammed\u201d her daughter. <\/p>\n
\u201cOkay so the first time it happened\u2026 I recognized it as something supernatural because the behaviour was off. It was like she\u2026 I know this sounds crazy, but it was like she was becoming possessed by a demon,\u201d the woman first told investigators during her interrogation. <\/p>\n
She also told the police that she was so afraid for her daughter\u2019s life that she left her on the side of the road. \u201cAnd I went back immediately, and she was gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Montreal mom charged with abandoning her child on highway denied bail A judge has ordered a Montreal mother charged with abandoning her three-year-old daughter on the side of a highway last month to remain in custody. <\/p>\n
The psychiatrist who evaluated the mother concluded she should remain in custody at a Montreal psychiatric institute, but eventually be permitted some unescorted leaves with conditions.<\/p>\n
St-Arnaud issued his ruling after the Crown and defence agreed on a set of facts in the case, as well as on the psychiatrist\u2019s conclusion that the woman\u2019s mental state should prevent her from being convicted.<\/p>\n
According to the court, on the morning of June 15, the woman sent co-workers text messages and emails that the Crown said exhibited her fragile mental state.<\/p>\n
She also posted a troubling video to TikTok, holding the girl and saying, \u201cyou try that again and this is going to get ugly.\u201d She quickly left her west-end Montreal home without her phone so as not to be tracked.<\/p>\n
Later that day, the woman entered a store in the Mont\u00e9r\u00e9gie area and reported her daughter missing, and that she did not remember the toddler\u2019s whereabouts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a hostile environment for a child,\u201d Crown prosecutor Lili Pr\u00e9vost-Gravel told the judge.<\/p>\n
The young girl, who is now in her father\u2019s custody, suffers from nightmares. The dad has been forced to stay home from work so he can be with her all the time. <\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, he can\u2019t leave her alone, so he can\u2019t work,\u201d Pr\u00e9vost-Gravel said. \u201cHe must always be in her presence, and there\u2019s the fear of being abandoned, of course.\u201d She will also require ongoing psychiatric care, Pr\u00e9vost-Gravel said.<\/p>\n
The youngster was hospitalized for four days, severely dehydrated and had multiple insect bites and lesions from poison ivy.<\/p>\n
The girl had difficulty relaxing her fingers because she had kept her fists clenched for so long. As well, her diaper had not been changed in days, and as a result, she was swollen and infected.<\/p>\n
The judge is expected to decide whether the woman should be released from detention while she receives medical treatment.<\/p>\n
With files from CTV News Montreal\u2019s Denise Roberts and The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Montreal mother charged with child abandonment after allegedly abandoning her daughter near a major Ontario highway has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[712,43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-147756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}